It's a provacative idea and worth debating. The main goal of any new "tax scheme" should be the elimination and simplification of the overall scheme. Basically, 80% of Accountants and Tax Lawyers should be doing new lines of work after a Tax Overhaul.
Any new structure should be "reality based." There's a common refrain from those on the socio-left: "RAISE Taxes on the Rich. If we just did that, then everything will be ok." The problem with this simplistic concept is that really Rich people have tax accountants that will devise ways to "avoid" paying taxes. This is one of the reasons for "Hauser' Law." William K. Hauser was an economists who astutely noted that, no matter what marginal tax rates were, the government has only been able to collect about 19.5% of GDP. So, whether we taxed our super rich at 80% or 30%, the US Government has never been able to collect more than 19.5% on average. Any new tax scheme needs to reconcile that concept/idea. The U.S. has been the most powerful economic engine the world has ever seen and we've never collected more than 20% of GDP in taxes--take that Sweden!
The goal should be simplicity and "fairness." I loathe using the word "fairness" because it's such a subjective and silly term in this context, but it is lame that some of these "Investment Partnerships" (i.e. Steve Schwartzman, Buffett, etc...) get taxed at 15% rates while straightforward small businesses ("normal everyday rich guys") get nailed for 25-30%.
Any new tax scheme must also wake up to the reality that U.S. business have TRILLIONS of dollars of overseas profits that WILL NOT come back to the U.S. until we make the corporate tax rate competitive with other nations.
