Personally, I would love a flat tax, although I would probably pay more under that system. It will never happen, though.
If we want a UBI of $24,000/year ($2,000/month) for an adult population of 250 million we are talking 6 trillion dollars in additional government spending. Assume for a minute we can cut 2 trillion in spending so we are talking about a spending increase of 4 trillion. This would mean roughly doubling current government revenues. If you wanted to do so with a flat tax, you'd see rates near the top rate now on all income.
Are people ready for a world where you get $24,000/year from the government and pay something like a 40% tax on all your income? Compared to the current tax code you probably break even at roughly $75,000/year and for incomes above that you'd pay more in tax.
I’ve also lived in “more socialist” countries where I paid higher taxes before moving to the US.
I would have little to no problem passing higher taxes if there was any reasonable assurance that those taxes would go to worthwhile purposes (infrastructure, healthcare, education), and not to the military or pork. Sadly, in America, land of the middleman, we know how unlikely that is.
The problem with that is that there are literally 100 crazy-assed questions that I have to answer in order to fill out all the supplementary worksheets, etc.
For instance: I bought a used EV. Do I take the tax break? Is it a deduction or credit?
Figuring that out will take at least 10 minutes after you find the right IRS bulletin.
Also, we have a roboadvisor, which means we hit all the corner cases for investment income.
Even with turbotax, it takes about 8 hours for our moderately complicated taxes. Just getting the basic stuff that any homeowner with a family has to do takes 2-3.
On top of that, the first year I used turbotax, I found out I had been overpaying ~$200-500 the previous 4 years.
Filing amended returns wasn’t worth it, but paying the intuit mafia would have saved me time and money in the long run.
If I had my way, we would move to a UBI and a flat tax (on income and capital gains).
That reduces the tax code to a two variable equation of a line.
I’d take a scatterplot of the 30-90th percentile of the US’s effective tax rates, and fit the line to that data set with a linear regression.
In addition to creating basic income, this would ensure that the ultra wealthy actually pay taxes.