I'm not that big a fan of The New York Times in the same way that I am of The Washington Post. (Although both, to be sure, contain far too many simple errors for professional publications. A hand-coded blog like this one has about as many errors.) However, occasionally the Times does a really great story. That story is right here and was written by Daniel Altman. From the piece:

Corporate dividends, however, are not the only kind of income that is taxed twice. Other taxes create a double, triple or even quintuple burden. And unlike the double taxation of dividends, which mainly affects the wealthy, the burden of other forms of multiple taxation - sales taxes, import taxes, payroll taxes, among others - often falls most heavily on poorer Americans.

These taxes may not be associated with inefficiencies in the capital markets, but can still take a hefty bite out of paychecks and reduce the incentive to work. Democrats and a few Republicans outside the White House have proposed cutting at least one of those taxes, but no one is talking about eliminating them altogether.

The double tax on dividends is really a double tax on corporate profits. The federal government taxes companies' profits and then taxes the money again when it passes to shareholders as dividends. The double tax affects about 54 million Americans. Economists agree that it also gives companies an incentive to issue debt - with the interest counting as a pretax cost - rather than equity.

Multiple taxes also affect the other 236 million Americans who would see no immediate benefits from elimination of the tax on dividends. For example, import tariffs, sales taxes and federal and state excise taxes can add to the price of a product.

Nearly all such taxes are extremely regressive, said John S. Barry, the chief economist of the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit educational group. Low earners spend a larger share of their income on alcohol, gasoline and tobacco, as well as inexpensive imported textiles and manufactured goods, than high earners do.

Want the kicker? (For those of you too lazy to read the article, of course. If there was one thing I learned from college, it was that you should never rely on people to read an article when they could just look at the picture & caption instead, especially if the combination was extremely offensive.) Here's the graph accompanying Altman's article: . Wow. Talk about an eye-opener. This further reinforces my own tax beliefs.

If it were up to me, I'd eliminate the sales tax and property taxes right from the start. I'd also work to eliminate tariffs and duties on everything coming into the country. What taxes would I leave? Corporate and personal income taxes. That way you'd have only one tax to pay a year. (In Edward's perfect world, the one tax would be distributed back to the states so you wouldn't have a federal and a state tax system. What can I say? It's a utopian ideal!) Simple, easy, hard to futz with. Would the income tax be progressive? Of course. But the sheer simplicity would make the code much easier to enforce. Eliminate all the special write-offs and just go back to basics. Plus, the reliance on income taxes would mean that you wouldn't get taxed for what you have, only for what you earn. There's something wrong about being taxed for what you already own. At the same time, taxing income would mean that the estate tax debate would be moot. If a large estate was parcelled up among four people, they'd be taxed for the influx of wealth that they just accumulated. Any income would count, so the system would still work perfectly.

Implementation? I'd start by trying to get a state's tax system in line with this belief. Eliminate the sales tax and the property tax, knock out write-offs and get back to basics and a solid corporate and personal income tax system. Once that's done, move the model to the federal level. How about it?