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Tax no one below a living allowance, tax comparable economic income comparably, expose hidden tax spending, return pollution rents, and make filing automatic and free.
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AI-researched, unverifiedLast Reviewed
Jul 11, 2026
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What is failing, what we would change, and the conclusion we are willing to defend.
A tax system reveals whose work counts, whose wealth escapes, which behavior government rewards, and which promises it is willing to finance. Complexity is often a subsidy for whoever can buy the best navigation. Fairness requires a visible contract with coherent rules.
The Innovation Party supports a Fair Tax Contract:
Create a universal tax-free living allowance. Replace the standard deduction and overlapping low-income work credits with one refundable allowance that protects a basic amount of earnings and phases smoothly into the rate schedule. Pay the refundable portion monthly when a household chooses, with annual reconciliation and a safe harbor against surprise debt.
Prefill ordinary returns. The IRS should send a completed draft using information it already receives. A taxpayer can accept, edit, use a private preparer, or file another way. Filing remains free, with paper and human help.
Tax comparable income comparably at the top. Maintain progressive rates, close preferential treatment that lacks a public purpose, recognize capital gains at death, and require ultra-high-wealth households to pay a minimum effective rate on economic income with deferral and interest for illiquid assets.
Publish a tax-expenditure budget. Every deduction, exclusion, credit, and preferential rate receives a cost, beneficiary distribution, purpose, performance measure, and sunset review. Hidden spending faces the same scrutiny as an appropriated program.
Protect productive investment without protecting rent extraction. Immediate expensing for genuine new investment and R&D can coexist with limits on interest games, profit shifting, monopoly rents, and subsidies for passive appreciation.
Price public harms and return the rent. Pollution, congestion, extraction of scarce public resources, and similar external costs can be taxed where measurement is credible. Most net revenue returns as an equal dividend or finances direct repair, preventing the instrument from becoming a general revenue disguise.
Pay for permanent promises. A permanent tax cut, credit, or allowance must name its offset or revenue source. Emergency relief can use a recorded waiver and expiration.
This progressive design removes complexity from ordinary filing. It rewards building, work, care, and research while applying the same moral standard to sophisticated ownership.
Simple at the kitchen table. Exacting at the top. Honest in the budget.
Turn frustration into useful pressure.
If this position misses evidence or a lived consequence, challenge it. If it holds up, help test it locally and connect it to the issues around it.