Don't forget "folksy" ...
“Am I running for president to shut down the federal government? Not exactly. But I am running to eliminate all federal income and payroll taxes. And I do mean all — personal federal, corporate federal, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, self-employment.”
But even though critics acknowledge that there would be some economic benefits from introducing a broad-based consumption tax, William Gale of the Brookings Institution said that the proposal itself was “fundamentally a ruse.”
“The notion that there is a 23 percent rate that solves all our problems,” he said, “is politically unrealistic and mathematically impossible.”
Whatever the rate, critics say, a steep federal retail tax, piled on top of existing state sales taxes, would encourage widespread illegal tax evasion, black market transactions and other forms of cheating, creating a cycle that would require even higher tax rates.
