The Last Tax - by Shaffer (Paperback)

About the Book

What if tax evasion were structurally self-defeating, and the federal tax code fit on a cocktail napkin?

Your share of national wealth times federal government spending.

Book Synopsis

The current federal tax system is broken beyond repair. Workers pay 20 to 30 percent on every dollar they earn. The wealthiest pay effective rates near zero on the appreciation of what they already hold. Seventy thousand pages of tax code, designed to be gamed by those with the resources to game it.

The Last Tax describes a complete replacement. One proportional wealth tax to replace every federal levy now collected. A public ledger that records all wealth, who controls it, and what they owe. A formula simple enough to fit on a napkin:

Your share of the nation's wealth, multiplied by what the federal government spends.

One Tax.

A single proportional wealth tax replaces income, payroll, corporate, estate, and capital gains taxes. The Internal Revenue Code and the seventy-thousand-page tax-research library built around it become obsolete.

One Ledger.

A public, tamper-evident record of all wealth, who controls it, and what they owe. County land records have tracked property for centuries. The same principle now extends to every asset class.

One Principle.

Whoever controls wealth bears the duty. Not the legal title-holder. Not the shell company. The human who can ultimately direct the asset. This pierces every trust, every offshore structure, every layer of legal abstraction.

One Consequence.

The incentive to hide inverts. Today, concealing wealth keeps it off the tax rolls. Under this system, hiding wealth leaves the claim open to anyone willing to register it and pay the duty.

The formula and the math.

Worked examples at every wealth level, from a fourth-grade teacher to a billionaire. Approximately nine out of ten American households pay less.

Valuation methods that work.

If a bank can value an asset to lend against it, the system can value it to tax it. Real estate, equities, private businesses, art, intellectual property, cryptocurrency.

A proposed constitutional amendment.

Full text, section-by-section analysis, and the historical precedent for moving fast when the political moment arrives.

Honest answers to the hard objections.

"It is unconstitutional." "You cannot value everything." "The rich will leave." "What about privacy?" Each stated in its strongest form, then answered with evidence.

A phased six-year transition.

Off-ramps at every stage. No taxpayer pays more than they do today until the system proves itself.

Enforcement that follows existing law.

Liens, tax certificates, and public auctions. Established procedure, not novel coercion.

A federal wealth tax has been politically discussed for a century. It has rarely been treated as a systems-design problem. This is that treatment.