My tax plan: We'll co-own the country

My fellow Americans:

Since Tuesday is tax day I'd like to take this opportunity to announce my new income tax plan for America, and also declare my candidacy for the presidency.

If elected I will eliminate the income tax side of the IRS entirely, except for a couple of guys to open the mail and deposit the checks.

My plan is to scrap the current rich people-favoring, receipt-saving, complicated-as-calculus income tax system and replace it with a voluntary flat tax.

This isn't the first proposal for a flat income tax, of course. Steve Forbes, for one, pushed for it in his presidential bid a couple of campaigns ago and plenty of other politicians have talked about it.

But as far as I know, no one has ever suggested that paying it be voluntary.

Until now.

I haven't yet figured the exact percentage. To do that I'm going to have to ask the Secretary of the Treasury to calculate the estimated accumulated annual income of 300 million Americans and determine what percentage of that figure we need, in addition to the usual taxes on food, gas, property, corporate profits, etc., to run the country.

But I'm guessing it will probably be around 20 percent.

To compute your income tax every year, just figure out how much money you made, multiply by 20 percent, and send a check to Washington in that amount.

That's it. You're done till next year.

Think how simple life will be. Think of all the costs we'll save. Companies will be able to cut their accounting departments in half. The federal government won't have any more office space problems, freeing up all those IRS bureaucrats. Overnight we will eliminate traffic jams in the District of Columbia.

Oh, and unless your name is Gates or Rockefeller, you'll probably pay less income tax.

There will be no penalty for not paying, for paying late or for paying less than you're supposed to.

But if you don't pay your share you will know about it and have to live with that every time you drive on a highway or call the police or use a fire hydrant or enjoy a city park or watch fireworks on the Fourth of July or send your kids to public school.

That will be your penalty. Knowing you are freeloading off your neighbor.

It might not work. We might find out honesty isn't the best policy. We might run out of money faster than Michael Jackson.