There are actually a lot of people who are against it, I would be there would be plenty of people out of work it we adopted it. The IRS and Accountants would be heavily affected I would guess.
"In embracing a tax overhaul, Republicans will be taking on some of the most powerful interests in Washington: home builders and Realtors facing the possible loss of the mortgage interest deduction; doctors and other service providers who might have to charge sales tax; and hospitals and universities facing the loss of tax deductions for charitable contributions.
Indeed, core Republican constituents such as the home builders' lobby and the National Federation of Independent Business are already gearing up to ensure that no pure form of a national sales tax or flat tax gets enacted. The National Association of Realtors is dusting off a 1995 study by DRI/McGraw Hill that concluded that housing prices would fall 15 percent without the deduction.
A pure flat tax may be politically unrealistic because some common tax advantages are too popular to kill. With each exemption, the flat tax grows. With too many, it would fall of its own weight. Consider a 20 percent flat tax: If Congress decides to retain the earned income tax credit to counter charges that the tax hurts the working poor, the rate must bump up to 20.4 percent, according to a study by economists William G. Gale, Scott Houser and John Karl Scholz. If the powerful home building lobby saves the mortgage interest deduction and philanthropists retain the tax break for charitable contributions, the rate climbs another 1.5 percent, to 21.9 percent.
Businesses are expected to insist on maintaining the deduction for payroll taxes. If they succeed, the rate will soar to 25.1 percent. Once Congress got through all the exemptions that lobbyists would insist the country could not live without, the flat tax rate would exceed 30 percent, said Gale, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Critics say both plans would raise taxes on middle-income taxpayers, a natural byproduct of lowering taxes for the wealthiest. The flat tax, for example, would exempt investment and savings income from taxes -- lowering taxes for those who own most of those investments. A sales tax would bite hardest on those who have to spend most of their income on household expenses.
For these reasons, many lawmakers are unwilling to embrace a specific plan. Instead, the idea gaining the greatest currency is a bold -- its critics say facile -- plan to repeal the tax code and require Congress to write a new law."
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/...cq/taylor.html