Remember, it's about the tax RATE.....how is that equal? Are you suggesting that Bill Gates and Sumner Redstone should be taxed at the federal level at the same rate as you? Even though what might be a hardship on you, with the tax rate ceilings rolled back over the past couple of decades, would equal what amounts to a buck fifty for Gates and Redstone? I didn't come up with that, Warren Buffett did. I heard him say that he figured it out for himself - and it was true! He said a roughly thousand dollar tax payment for the average family in Omaha was equivelent to his paying a dollar and fifty cents in taxes. That's why taxes need to be progressive. Being equal, as you suggest, means we would all feel the pain in the same fashion. There's no equality in the "flat" sales tax either when you consider the chart in my last post. When the rate is the same, the poor and middle class pay a higher percentage of their income because they pay the same sales tax rate. That's equality? No, that's the very definition of regressive.