I've been reading up on the flat tax

Flat tax won't work. If they would institute a flat tax, they would close loopholes we all take at tax time. This is why Malcolm Forbes running for President was all for the flat tax.

" Following the 1986 tax reform, the average income tax paid by somebody in the $50,000-$75,000 bracket indeed went down, and I mean way down--$1,100. The total tax take for that bracket went up $7.6 billion because there were many more taxpayers in that range in 1987. Fact is, taxes for virtually all tax brackets went down. Yet the total tax collected went up.

Eliminating many popular tax deductions forced millions of Americans into higher brackets, so they paid more tax. Example: elimination of the IRA deduction. If you and your spouse (a) both worked, (b) made a total of more than $50,000, and (c) had previously both taken the maximum IRA deduction, in 1987 your taxable income increased $4,000 even if your real income stayed the same. Assuming two kids, $53,000 in joint income, and $9,000 in deductions in both '86 and '87, your taxes went up $862.

 Taxes went up for most affluent Americans. In 1987 they reported an additional $300 billion in income, of which maybe two-thirds stemmed from closed loopholes. As a result, people making from $50,000 to $1 million paid an extra $24 billion in tax. Those making under $50K  paid less (average tax cut: $5 to $867) and those making $1 million and up (average cut: $214,000).

Here are the numbers for 1992 from the Statistical Abstract of the United States: The top 7 percent of those filing returns, those reporting adjusted gross income of $75,000 or more, paid 51 percent of total U.S. income taxes. The top 3 percent of filers, those making $100,000-plus, paid 40 percent of the taxes. The top four-fifths of 1 percent of filers, who make $200,000 or more, paid 26 percent of the taxes. The top one-twentieth of 1 percent of filers, those making $1 million or more--and Tom Wolfe's little demonstration in Bonfire of the Vanities notwithstanding, nobody's going to tell me those guys aren't rich--paid 10 percent of the taxes. That's a mere 67,000 households, who on average paid income tax of $707,000 apiece."