NFIB LEADS CAMPAIGN TO SCRAP TAX CODE

The National Federation of Independent Business has emerged over the last few years as America's foremost organization fighting for the interests and concerns of small business. In Missouri the NFIB represents 12,000 businesses. On a range of issues from taxes to worker compensation to health care policy to fighting excessive regulation, the NFIB has been in there pitching. On occasion these efforts have been crowned with historic success, and here the 1994 defeat of the Clinton health care plan comes to mind. Joined by many others, the NFIB played a huge role in convincing our federal lawmakers in Washington of the disaster that this misguided takeover of one-seventh of the U.S. economy would have been for all Americans. Friend and foe alike have testified to the NFIB's effectiveness.

For the last year, the NFIB has been involved in an even more ambitious project: a massive petition drive to gain millions of signatures demanding that Congress junk the federal tax code by Dec. 31, 2000.

That the federal tax code is truly an abomination is practically beyond dispute. At more than seven million words, its regulations represent an impenetrable thicket understood by no rank-and-file citizens and not even fully understood by many tax law experts. The recent test wherein a set of income-and-expense figures for a mythical couple were submitted to a dozen expert tax preparers is instructive. The 12 preparers came back with 12 differing answers as to the amount of tax owed. Every taxpayer knows the fear inspired by the Internal Revenue Service, an arm of government known for its cavalier arrogance and outright abuse of citizens' rights.

What is in dispute is whether any goal this ambitious can be realized as soon as 2000. At least it is worth asking with what, exactly, the existing code will be replaced. Currently a debate is raging within the Republican Party between advocates of a flat tax or a national sales tax. The gambit of proposing to scrap the tax code altogether may be useful in forcing the hand of Congress, but care will need to be taken to ensure that a workable replacement is at hand.