Hyman Flat Wrong on Flat Tax

Who would have thunk it? Mark Hyman advocates soaking the rich by taxing them more in his latest commentary. Has he become a card-carrying liberal?

Heavens, no. Rather, he plays the same cynical game he’s played many times before: conflating tax fairness with tax flatness. By doing this, he advocates for a tax system that would benefit the wealthy, but sell it to a middle-class audience as a way to get the rich to pay their fair share.

Hyman quotes figures from the right-wing think tank, the Tax Foundation, on what filling out taxes costs Americans in terms of money and time. He then runs out to the barn and fashions a straw man argument that doesn’t pass the giggle test:

Critics claim a fair and simple tax code would burden the poor and benefit the
wealthy.

No one has said that. What any number of economists, tax lawyers, and other experts have argued is that a flat tax would benefit the wealthy. But fairness and flatness aren’t the same thing. As we’ve noted here many, many times before, you can have an incredibly simple tax code requiring only a postcard-size return and have it still be progressive (i.e., fair). By the same token, a “flat tax “(which is what Hyman finally cops to promoting at the very end of the commentary) can still be plenty complex.

More importantly, a flat tax (more properly called a work tax, since it taxes income earned through labor), at least in just about any version of it that’s been seriously put forward, such as that by presidential campaign hobbyist Steve Forbes, would end up taxing the income of wealthy Americans at a lower effective rate than the current system (and, by the way, explode the national debt).

That, of course, is why the leading proponents of a flat tax system are almost exclusively wealthy individuals.

Just to add a particularly Hymanesque bit of ugliness to the proceedings, Hyman chooses Teresa Heinz Kerry as his poster child for the wealthy not paying their fair share. He closes by saying,

Under a flat tax, Mrs. John Kerry would have paid her fair share. That is why
her husband opposes a fair tax system.

No, she wouldn’t, and no, he doesn’t. Hyman’s right that the Byzantine tax code is as complicated as it is primarily as a way of helping the wealthy shelter their money. But a flat tax doesn’t correct this problem. It just makes the sheltering easier and broader. And while most conservatives excoriated Kerry as someone who would “punish success” by rolling back Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy, Hyman charges him with the crime of protecting the wealthy from paying their fair share.

This isn’t because Hyman is some sort of iconoclast in conservative circles. He doesn’t buy his own argument. Rather, it’s simply a way of combining a jab at Kerry (and, by proxy, Democrats) in the context of arguing for a flat tax. It makes no difference if this contradicts earlier attacks, or if the substance of the charge (i.e., protecting the wealthy) is actually precisely what Hyman himself is doing.

In the cynical world of Mark Hyman, whatever sounds good at the moment is fine. Don’t mind the contradictions, and for God’s sake, don’t take the truth into consideration. Hyman believes his audience is too dumb to know or care. In fact, he’s counting on it.

Let’s hope Hyman is as wrong about this as he is about most things.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

Hyman Index: 4.69