Miscellaneous Tax Policy Documents: Archive

Blueprints for Basic Tax Reform

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Title page, Foreword, & Acknowledgements
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 – Introduction and Summary of the Report
Chapter 2 – What is to be the Tax Base?
Chapter 3 – A Model Comprehensive Income Tax
Chapter 4 – A Model Cash Flow Tax
Chapter 5 – Quantitative Analysis
Chapter 6 – Transition Considerations
Bibliography
Full Document (10.3 MB)

Summary

Blueprints for Basic Tax Reform, released January 1977, was published in response to increasingly widespread dissatisfaction in the United States with the Federal tax system. The first part of this report is devoted to clarifying the goals of the tax system, attempting to give specific content to the universally recognized objectives of equity, efficiency, and simplicity. Based on this analysis, two alternative conceptions of an ideal tax system are adopted to form the basis for practical reform plans. The alternative proposals for the tax reform are: (1) a comprehensive income tax, and (2) a consumption base tax, called a cash flow tax.