Repeating
what other colonial powers have done in times past, instituting policies
or systems not possible to do on the home front, the US imposes a flat tax
on Iraq that might be the equivalent of a Superbowl ad: great marketing
for a huge audience. KWC
U.S.
Administrator Imposes Flat Tax System on Iraq
By Dana Milbank
and Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 2,
2003; Page A09 @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50031-2003Nov1.html
The
flat tax, long a dream of economic conservatives, is finally getting its
day -- not in the United States, but in Iraq.
It
took L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Baghdad, no more than a
stroke of the pen Sept. 15 to accomplish what eluded the likes of
publisher Steve Forbes, Reps. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.) and Richard K. Armey
(R-Tex.), and Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) over the course of a decade and two
presidential campaigns.
"The
highest individual and corporate income tax rates for 2004 and subsequent
years shall
not exceed 15 percent,"
Bremer wrote in Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 37, "Tax
Strategy for 2003," issued last month.
Voilą!
Iraq has a flat tax, and the 15 percent rate is even lower than Forbes (17
percent) and Gramm (16 percent) favored for the United States. And, unless
a future Iraqi government rescinds it, the flat tax will remain long after
the Americans have left.
"It's
extremely good news," said Grover
Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform and a Bush
administration ally. Bremer's vaguely
worded edict
leaves open the possibility that Iraqis could face different levels of
taxation below 15 percent, but "they told me it's a flat rate and it
appears as though it's a flat rate," Norquist said. The tax fighter added:
"It
might be a hint to the rest of us."
Bremer's
new economic policy for Iraq will slash Saddam Hussein's top tax rate for
individuals and businesses from 45 to 15 percent. Of course, since
Hussein's government, like others in the Middle East, almost never
enforced tax collection, there
is no real history of paying taxes in the country.
Bremer's
statement in the following excerpt from Joel Brinkley's piece in today's
NYT is coded language for:
"We're getting the hell out of here. Our
soldiers are at the point of mutiny. Americans are going to turn aginst
Bush with vengeance quite soon unless we leave. We'll concoct a
Constitution and fling it at the Iraqis and let them get on with it. Never
mind that Saddam Hussein has not been caught. Never mind that the
Constitution will not resolve the problem of the relationship between the
Sunnis and the Shias, nor that between the Kurds and Turkey. We're getting
out because Bush won't have a snowflake in hell's chance of re-election if
this goes on for much longer."
When the Americans get out of Iraq
by the spring there'll very likely be a bloodbath and either the Sunnis +
Saddam's Fedayeen will win or the Shias will win. It's as simple and messy
as that unless -- and it's very big unless -- the Iranians invade Iraq and
occupy the southern part of the country in order to protect the
Shias.
As far as the American energy situation is concerned, the
country will be back to where they were a year ago, having to rely on
Saudi Arabia as their main Middle East oil sujppliers. And SA is just
about the most unstable country in the world right now. (See my posting of
the interview with Prince Turki from this week-end's Financial Times
Magazine.)
Keith
Hudson
<<<<
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 1 -- Almost every
sector of life in Baghdad was off kilter on Saturday, usually a normal
business day here, because of anonymous warnings that hospitals, schools
and other unspecified sites would be the targets of
bombings.
Residents kept their children home from school. The
United States military kept most soldiers in their barracks, and
shopkeepers complained that they had no business.
After one of the
worst weeks of violence here in months, L. Paul Bremer III, the special
representative for Iraq, said the American strategy for quelling the
attacks was to "encourage Iraqis to play a central role" in securing the
nation.
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