To most Americans, the United States tax code has become a vast and confounding puzzle. In 1940, the instructions to the form 1040 were about four pages long. Today they have ballooned to more than a hundred pages, and the form itself contains more than ten schedules and twenty worksheets. The...

Michael Graetz assesses the two proposals of the President’s Advisory Panel and finds them lacking and politically infeasible. He proposes moving to a VAT, the Panel's plan “C,” and using the VAT to eliminate the income tax for 150 million Americans. Graetz has an answer to maintain...