There is this article by this guy here from New York Post, and interestingly the Russians decreased their taxes, while we keep increasing them, we are on different directions!
Oh, To Be Taxed Like a Russian, by Deroy Murdock
ONCE again, American taxpayers are struggling to complete their tax returns.
They will pay accountants and attorneys some $140 billion this year to generate paperwork to accompany their checks to the IRS. The 46,900-page U.S. Tax Code governs the whole process, with enough loopholes to lasso a light breeze.
Too bad this isn't Russia. Since Jan. 1, 2001, Russians have enjoyed a 13 percent flat tax.
After just one year, the results of this law already look positive. As Hoover Institution scholar Alvin Rabushka observes in a Feb. 21 analysis for www.russiaeconomy.org, the 13 percent flat tax has exceeded the expectations of the government in terms of revenue. Adjusting for currency fluctuations, Rabushka adds, real ruble revenues increased about 28 percent.
This initiative is establishing the custom of paying taxes in Russia, senior Duma member Dr. Konstantin Remchukov said. It's greatly simplified everything. He said that three years ago, tax revenue equaled 9 to 10 percent of Russian GDP.By last November, that number had grown to 16 percent. There was a huge, monstrous non-compliance problem with the old system, says Dr. Richard Vedder, an Ohio University economics professor and board member of the National Taxpayers Union. People essentially operated in the underground economy. There were a lot of payments in kind where people were not paid in cash but in goods to facilitate tax evasion. That problem, from what I understand, has not totally disappeared but has dramatically declined in the last year or two.
Beyond the flat tax, President Vladimir Putin has signed legislation to chop the corporate tax from 35 percent to 24 percent, effective last January 1. Putin hurled the double taxation of corporate income onto the ash heap of history. Analyzing all this from his dacha in Hell, V.I. Lenin must be stroking his beard in utter bewilderment.
Of course, the country that Lenin once misruled still must do plenty to unravel his legacy. Stronger private property rights, a rule of law and full respect for free speech are sorely needed. But with its 13 percent flat tax, Russia now has a far more impressive export than those interlocking, wooden matrioschka dolls.
