Rick Perry’s flat tax plan, built on misleading statistics

By Glenn Kessler
WashPost

“Central to my plan is giving every American the option of throwing out that 3 million words of the current tax code and, I might, add, the cost of complying with all of that code in order to pay a 20 percent flat tax on their income. You know, the size of the current code is more than 72,000 pages. That's represented by this pallet right over here and the reams of paper. That's what the current tax code looks like.” — Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Oct. 25, 2011

Rick Perry, trying to relaunch his sagging campaign, on Tuesday announced that he would push for an optional 20-percent flat tax. We will leave the merits of such a system to other analysts, but the key to his argument is that such a system would be so simple that taxpayers could file their return on a post card.

So we were struck by his use of two figures — 72,000 pages and the 3 million words of the tax code — as a way to illustrate the complexity of the current system. He even pointed to 72,000 pages of paper before holding up a post card he had stuffed in his jacket pocket.

We are always suspicious when politicians mention page numbers. Are these numbers correct?

The Facts

Anyone with basic math skills would instantly notice there is a disconnect between those numbers. If you divide 3 million words by 72,000 pages, that would mean 42 words per page. That’s rather big type.

(More here.)