A flat tax simply eliminates tax brackets; usually the upper one is one that goes. It's entirely possible to have a flat tax system with an incredibly complex a

A flat tax simply eliminates tax brackets; usually the upper one is one that goes. It's entirely possible to have a flat tax system with an incredibly complex and irrational set of deductions, just as it's possible to have a progressive tax system with zero deductions. As for Winters' book, which I haven't read, it sounds like a more pessimistic version of Olson's Power and Prosperity, which essentially argued that all forms of security arrangement involved those with power extracting money from people, but kings had less incentive to pillage and more incentive to protect than bandits, and democracies more interest in using extracted wealth for public benefit than kings. I doubt Winter would disagree with my characterisation of campaigns for flat taxes as being one of oligarchs' wealth defence strategies in a democracy.