The Fair Tax is the latest proposal to reform the tax system out there. Unlike most, this one might get someplace, because it is designed from the bottom up to be fair to everybody, and to eliminate the Internal Revenue Code, which is not fair to people. Here is a brief article on it, which doesn't go into much detail other than referring you to the easy-to-read Fair Tax Book, which turns out to be fascinating. I wasn't really prepared for a tax book to be fascinating, but this proposal finally sounds like it could work: it doesn't mash down the poor (they get monthly subsidies for the amount of sales tax they spend), it doesn't make you pay income tax if you do something like try and save up for a house or a car (savings account interest is currently taxed, and at the return I'm getting, to add tax to it is to add insult to injury), and it gets rid of the corporate tax so that we don't have accountants and lawyers paid six figure salaries to get around the efforts of government workers to enforce the tax code. On prices, it's a wash: you pay the same, since there is built in tax to anything you have now (you weren't under the illusion that corprations actually PAID that tax, were you? What they didn't pay, they upped your prices for). Get the book, it's worth it.