You're foursquare in a dilemma if you want to broaden the base and lower tax rates. If you broaden the base, you raise taxes on people who pay nothing, and if you lower rates you cut taxes for the rich.

We need to lower marginal tax rates and increase investment.

Broaden the tax base, close loopholes and flatten the tax rates - all of which would bring more revenue stability and certitude to projections as well as make filing a comparable breeze.

What Governor Romney is proposing is an across-the-board cut in marginal tax rates for households, every household in America by 20 percent. And we'll have to broaden the base to pay for that. Also, a very deep cut in the corporate rate.

The linkage between tax rates and public services is, if not non-existent, negative.

In the European context tax rates are high and government expenditure is focused on current expenditure. A 'good' consolidation is one where taxes are lower and the lower government expenditure is on infrastructures and other investments.