@Jake I agree wholeheartedly.
There simply has to be a better way. Other options:
1) My understanding is that in Europe, instead of income tax, they apply a VAT (Value Added Tax) to purchases to secure income to fund the government.
2) When we lived in Hong Kong
individuals & corporations paid a flat 15% income tax. Worked well. The form was a single page with a few adjustments allowed (dependents & hardship as I recall) but the whole thing took all of 20 minutes to fill out and file.
From what I've gathered, in Europe, there is an income and a VAT. The VAT is a consumption tax, like what has been proposed by FairTax.org, but they still have the income tax. We would need to repeal the 16th Amendment so that the government would not be allowed to collect an income tax and at the same time authorize the consumption tax. We can't let both of them exist at the same time since history has shown that if you let a government have a source of taxation, they are extremely resistant at giving up that source. We can't do it by phasing the consumption tax in, we have to have a clean break.
It's been said that businesses do not actually pay taxes -- they just pass those costs along to their customers. As such, if you were to change the tax system so that no one (including businesses) had an income tax, that would result in lower prices (assuming that it is a business that is not a monopoly). As it is now, a business might have quite a bit of expenses that they need to deduct on their taxes. A company might have $1M in income, but if it has $900K in expenses that were necessary in order to make that $1M, it is not fair to tax them on the $1M -- they should only be taxed on the $100K that was actual profit. As such, a flat tax that does not allow for any deductions will not help. Besides, you are still having to fill out forms and "tax day" still exists. By going with a consumption tax, the tax gets spread out throughout the year and "tax day" is just another day of the year that you don't have to do anything special for. Also, with a strictly consumption tax, all of your income is "pre-tax" and you can invest it as you see fit. It basically gives everyone a tax-deferred retirement account (e.g. Keogh, SEP, etc) to invest their money. It would promote savings and most economists consider that a *good* thing. Also, you get to choose whether to pay consumption taxes to some degree. If you don't like the current government, you could choose to put off certain purchases so that that administration does not have that income. Not that it would make a difference, but it could be a symbolic gesture that some people might choose to do. The government could still promote certain industries if so desired by making those industries not subject to the consumption tax or maybe having a reduced tax rate for those items. For example, let's say that the government wants to encourage people to buy American made cellphones instead of foreign made ones. They could say that American made ones were not subject to the consumption tax, possibly making them more price competitive with foreign made ones. Whether it is a good idea to do this sort of thing is an entirely different discussion though.
On a side note, our repressive income tax system is the fault of Lincoln so that he could pay for his little war and his raping of the Constitution. At that time, the Republicans were the liberals and the Democrats were the conservatives. Somewhere along the way, things changed and the Democrats moved further and further to the left to the point where now they are basically socialists / communists.