A fair and simple tax system

I see the Treasurer Wayne Swan is announcing a review of the tax system. He is quoted as saying today:

"A modern tax system needs to be efficient, it needs to be internationally competitive. It certainly also needs to be fair, it needs to ensure that everybody pays their fair share, and it needs to be simpler."

Now maybe it's just me, but I find it a bit worrying that our federal treasurer believes that the tax system can be fair and simple (or at least simpler). Round up a group of people to define what we mean by "fair" and a "fair share" and you will pretty quickly see why it can't be simple.

"Fair" might be a simple word, but it's not a simple concept. Any tax system that seeks to be "fair" and most tax systems (believe it or not) do seek to be "fair" is doomed to be complicated. Whereas a simple system (e.g. flat tax) could be implemented, but it would probably not be widely considered to be fair.

Indeed, as far as I can tell, for most people, a fair tax system is one in which they pay nothing (or better still get something) and someone else pays. Unfortunately it's not a scalable solution.

Now I would have hoped that you didn't get to be Federal Treasurer without knowing that fair and simple tax systems is probably unachievable. But still, a simple and fair tax system would be a Good Thing, so 20 out of 10 if he can do it!