The thing is, you can greatly simplify the tax code and still have progressive tax brackets. Looking up the total amount due in the back of the tax booklet (or

The thing is, you can greatly simplify the tax code and still have progressive tax brackets. Looking up the total amount due in the back of the tax booklet (or more realistically having software calculate the total due) is the easy part of doing one's taxes. Cut out the various deductions and credits and additions to income etc. to make things simple. Then calculating tax due becomes a simple table lookup or addition of amounts from multiple tables. 3rd grade math. We don't need to set a single universal x% tax rate to make things easy.