What really should be said is there is no GOOD REASON why the Bush Tax Cuts Shouldn't BE EXTENDED!!!
It is a bad idea to raise taxes during this weak recovery, but the Bush tax cuts added $1.5 trillion to the debt. Had the tax cuts not occurred, the debt would be lower. That is a good reason to, eventually, allow the Bush tax cuts to expire.
But wouldn't it also be as good or better to simply spend less and/or bring in the 'missing' revenue via taxation of those paying zero in income taxes? Or are you saying that it must come from a disproportionate rate on only a select few persons within the citizenry?
There 3 types of people paying 0 income taxes in this country.
1) Exceptionally poor people. An income tax Y on poor people is not proportional to the same size tax Y on a rich person. If you are spending basically all of your income on food, housing, health care, etc then you have no money to give the government for taxes. This is why there is a 0 percent tax rate on the bottom bracket.
2)Some of the richest people in the country that earn money from investments. Warren Buffett famously claims that he pays less taxes than his secretary or something like that. This is because capital gains tax on investment revenue is only 15%. If you salary yourself into the bottom tax bracket by say... paying yourself 1 dollar a year, then you can make millions of dollars a year on the stock market and pay 0% income tax on your 1 dollar, and 15% capital gains tax on your millions.
3)Fuckin' cheatin' jerkoffs. People that cheat on taxes are clustered at the ends of the spectrum. Lower class people who get paid under the table and rich people that can hire smart guys that know how to hide income sometimes pay 0 income tax.
Which of these groups did you intend on bringing into the fold, and how?
Now, the reason that flat tax is not possible is because there isn't a happy medium rate that would allow people that live paycheck to paycheck and super wealthy people to pay anywhere near what the government currently uses. Flat taxes put the tax burden more heavily on the poor and middle class because they need more of their income to survive, and frequently a flat tax incorporates a higher sales tax to make up for the huge shortfall. Sales taxes put the burden even MORE heavily on the poor and middle class for the same reason.
Informed analysis of flat tax and higher sales taxes have shown to create huge shortfalls and place the tax burden more heavily on the poor and middle class.