Taxes
PROPOSED / DRAFT — TAXES
POSITION
Taxes should be simple, transparent, predictable, fair, and economically sustainable. Government should justify spending before automatically demanding additional revenue.
WHY THIS MATTERS
A tax system should raise necessary revenue without hiding its real cost, rewarding political favoritism, creating needless compliance burdens, or making ordinary financial planning impossible.
SIMPLICITY & TRANSPARENCY
MPA supports:
Plain-language tax rules and instructions
Clear explanations of rates, deductions, credits, phaseouts, and penalties
Fewer duplicative forms and unnecessary filing requirements
Public accounting of major tax preferences and who qualifies for them
Taxpayer notices that explain the calculation, evidence, deadline, and appeal rights
Modern filing systems that do not require taxpayers to repeatedly provide information the government already possesses
PREDICTABILITY & TRANSITION
Major tax changes should ordinarily apply prospectively, include reasonable implementation time, and avoid retroactively changing the treatment of completed lawful transactions. Temporary provisions should state when they expire and whether extension is expected to require new legislative approval.
FAIRNESS & ECONOMIC EFFECTS
Similarly situated taxpayers should receive similar treatment. Tax preferences should have a stated public purpose, estimated cost, review date, and measurable standard for continuation.
Major reforms should receive transparent economic modeling that addresses revenue, compliance cost, growth, investment, wages, prices, distributional effects, federalism, and likely unintended consequences. Estimates and material assumptions should be public and independently reviewable.
PROPERTY TAXATION
Property taxation deserves particular scrutiny because Americans should not effectively be permanently renting fully owned property from government. States and localities should provide meaningful procedures for valuation challenges, transparent assessments, notice before major increases, and protection against losing a qualifying primary home solely because rapidly rising assessments made the tax unaffordable.
Specific senior protections are addressed under Social Security, Senior Security & Retirement.
ADMINISTRATION & ENFORCEMENT
Tax agencies should provide timely answers, accurate account records, secure handling of taxpayer information, an independent appeal process, and proportional penalties. Enforcement should focus on deliberate evasion, fraud, and abusive schemes while allowing prompt correction of good-faith mistakes.
ALTERNATIVE TAX SYSTEMS
MPA supports serious public evaluation of alternative taxation systems. No major replacement should proceed without a published transition plan, distributional analysis, revenue estimate, enforcement model, and comparison with the existing system.
MPA FEDERAL TAX SYSTEM
The United States should replace the overlapping federal tax code with a defined list of taxes, published marginal brackets, limited credits, uniform income rules, and no special industry or investment loopholes. The same economic income should receive the same treatment regardless of whether it arrives as wages, business income, investment gain, property, digital assets, or another form of compensation.
Individual Marginal Rates During Debt Repayment
Taxable income slice | Regular rate | Total while 5% debt surtax applies
$0 to $25,000: 5% regular; 10% total.
$25,001 to $50,000: 6% regular; 11% total.
$50,001 to $75,000: 7% regular; 12% total.
$75,001 to $100,000: 8% regular; 13% total.
$100,001 to $125,000: 10% regular; 15% total.
$125,001 to $150,000: 12% regular; 17% total.
$150,001 to $175,000: 14% regular; 19% total.
$175,001 to $200,000: 16% regular; 21% total.
$200,001 to $225,000: 18% regular; 23% total.
$225,001 to $250,000: 20% regular; 25% total.
$250,001 to $275,000: 23% regular; 28% total.
$275,001 to $300,000: 26% regular; 31% total.
$300,001 to $325,000: 29% regular; 34% total.
$325,001 to $350,000: 32% regular; 37% total.
$350,001 to $375,000: 35% regular; 40% total.
$375,001 to $400,000: 38% regular; 43% total.
$400,001 to $425,000: 41% regular; 46% total.
$425,001 to $450,000: 44% regular; 49% total.
$450,001 to $499,999: 47% regular; 52% total.
$500,000 or more: 49% regular; 54% total.
These are marginal rates. Each rate applies only to the income within that slice.
Corporate Marginal Rates During Debt Repayment
Annual taxable profit slice | Regular rate | Total while 5% debt surtax applies
$0 to $100,000: 0% regular; 5% total.
$100,001 to $1 million: 5% regular; 10% total.
$1,000,001 to $10 million: 10% regular; 15% total.
More than $10 million: 15% regular; 20% total.
Other Federal Taxes
Debt-repayment surtax: Individuals and corporations pay an additional 5% of taxable income or profit until certified gross federal debt reaches zero. The surtax then ends automatically and may not be renamed, continued, or recreated without another constitutional amendment.
Consumption tax: A 15% tax applies once to final goods and services consumed in the United States and must be included in the advertised price. Registered businesses receive credit for tax paid on production inputs, inventory, equipment, and goods held for resale so the tax does not cascade through the supply chain. Exports are not domestic consumption. Imports consumed in the United States are covered. A nonbusiness individual with less than $50,000 in qualifying annual sales is not required to collect the tax.
Reciprocal tariffs: If another country imposes a 10% tariff or comparable trade burden against American trade, the United States applies a comparable 10% burden in return. A 100% foreign burden may receive a 100% reciprocal response. Measures must be documented, comparable, and reduced when the foreign burden is reduced. When a reciprocal tariff would apply to an input necessary for American production and no adequate American supplier is reasonably available, a narrow temporary exemption or rebate may protect that input. The government must publish the input, quantity, American industry served, supplier search, and expiration date. Relief is unavailable when a capable American supplier can meet the need on commercially reasonable terms. Where practical, the United States shall impose the equivalent reciprocal burden on another comparable product from the same country. Every exception is quantity-limited, independently reviewable, and expires unless the shortage is re-proved.
Non-American income surcharge: A person who is not a United States citizen and earns taxable income from the United States pays an additional flat 10%.
All Income Is Income
Wages, salaries, tips, business income, capital gains, dividends, interest, carried interests, barter, digital assets, noncash compensation, and property or services received as payment are valued and taxed as ordinary income. The first $20,000 in total gifts received by a person during a tax year is untaxed. Value received above that annual total is ordinary income. A taxpayer's own documented after-tax investment and legitimate direct transaction costs are recognized so the same underlying value is not taxed twice, subject to the inherited-business rule below.
Business Sales, Inheritance and Legitimate Business Debt
Money, property, debt relief, or other value received from selling or transferring a business or ownership interest is ordinary income. No separate business-transfer tax applies.
For an ordinary business sale, taxable sale income equals the cash and fair market value of other consideration actually received, less the seller's own documented after-tax investment, legitimate direct selling costs, and bona fide business debt actually repaid from the sale proceeds or legally assumed by the buyer. A debt may reduce taxable proceeds only once. When the stated sale price already represents the seller's net amount after buyer-assumed debt, the same debt is not subtracted again.
The receipt of an inheritance is not ordinary income. Federal estate and inheritance taxes remain eliminated. An inherited business or ownership interest receives a zero basis for the heir. The deceased owner's investment does not transfer as the heir's tax basis. If the heir later sells, the entire net amount received is ordinary income, reduced only by the heir's own documented post-inheritance investment, legitimate direct selling costs, and qualifying business debt under this section. Income earned while the inherited business continues operating is taxed normally.
Business debt must be documented and incurred for a legitimate business purpose. Personal debt, artificial debt, sham related-party debt, and debt incurred to distribute money or property to an owner do not reduce taxable sale proceeds unless the owner distribution was already taxed as income. Debt already deducted or credited elsewhere cannot be deducted again. Forgiven business debt is ordinary income.
Low-Interest Loans
A bona fide nonexempt loan carrying an actual all-in annual interest rate of at least 11% is not treated as taxable income and owes no loan tax. A nonexempt loan carrying an actual all-in annual interest rate below 11% is subject to an annual tax equal to 5% of its average monthly outstanding principal balance.
Required fees, points, insurance, affiliate charges, and disguised payments count when determining the real interest rate. Related-party, employer, shareholder, trust, foreign, refinanced, securities-backed, and split loans are aggregated according to beneficial ownership when they are used to avoid the rule.
Exempt loans are first and second home mortgages, financing for up to five vehicles per household with no more than $100,000 of qualifying principal per vehicle, student loans, medical financing, and legitimate business operating, equipment, or growth financing. The business exemption does not cover personal expenses, owner distributions, or compensation disguised as a loan. The 11% threshold and loan tax apply prospectively to nonexempt loans created, renewed, extended, or materially refinanced on or after the policy’s effective date.
Only Approved Credits and Exclusions
A $6,000 credit for each qualifying child through age 18, limited to five children.
A $6,000 credit for one unemployed spouse.
For each person age 70 or older, the first $150,000 of regular annual income is exempt. Income above that amount enters the ordinary marginal schedule. The exclusion is personal and cannot be transferred through a relative, trust, corporation, or nominee. The debt surtax, consumption tax, and tariffs still apply.
No other federal deduction, credit, shelter, preferential investment rate, special industry exclusion, or tax expenditure is permitted. Recognition of the taxpayer's own after-tax investment, legitimate direct transaction costs, and qualifying business debt under the business-sale rule determines actual income and is not a separate tax preference.
Taxes Eliminated
The plan eliminates federal payroll taxes, federal property taxes, federal estate and inheritance taxes, the separate capital-gains tax, separate federal excise taxes replaced by the consumption tax, and every other federal tax not expressly authorized by the amendment.
State Tax Structure
Every state shall use the federal format, definitions, brackets, income rules, exemptions, disclosure rules, and anti-avoidance standards for individual income, business-profit, and consumption taxes. A state may set a corresponding rate below the regular federal rate, including zero, but may not exceed it. State, county, city, village, school-district, authority, and other local taxes are counted together. Tariffs and the temporary federal debt surtax remain exclusively federal.
There is no federal property tax. State property systems must follow the national classifications and taxpayer protections:
Protected primary residence: One owner-occupied primary home per resident household and ordinary personal property not used for business are exempt. The protected parcel may not exceed three acres. Additional homes, income-producing property, and excess acreage enter the applicable business, luxury, or agricultural class.
Operating business property: 1% of assessed value while operating.
Building and testing: 0% during the actual building and testing phase for up to 15 years. An affiliate sale, shell transfer, refinancing, new permit, token work, or parcel division does not restart the period.
Inactive or abandoned business property: 5% after operations cease, required operations fail to begin, or active building stops. A limited transition remains available for a genuine business failure or foreclosure.
Luxury property: 5% of assessed value.
Agricultural property: 0.5% of assessed value while current agricultural use is maintained.
An in-home business may require state or local approval under uniform standards. When a home is formally classified as business property, the entire property may be taxed at the applicable business-property rate. The classification may be changed no more than once per year, effective at the beginning of the following tax year or upon sale to a new owner.
Government Fees and Complete Price Disclosure
Government fees must be zero whenever reasonably possible and otherwise may not exceed the documented reasonable cost of the specific service. A mandatory charge exceeding that cost is treated as a tax and cannot be used to evade the authorized structure.
There is no fee for one government identification card every seven years or one firearm purchase permit every seven years.
Every tax and government fee must be included in the price disclosed before a transaction is completed. A receipt may itemize the charge, but the stated price may not increase at checkout through a previously undisclosed tax or government fee.
Anti-Avoidance, Due Process and Independent Audit
The substance of a transaction controls over its title or form. Taxes may not be avoided through artificial loans, shell companies, related-party transfers, deferred or disguised compensation, United States-controlled offshore entities, reclassification of personal expenses as business expenses, artificial division of property, income, sales, or ownership, or renaming a prohibited tax as a fee, assessment, permit, toll, surcharge, or special charge.
Tax enforcement must provide notice, access to the evidence, an opportunity to respond, an independent appeal, and judicial review. Every tax rate, valuation, distribution, exemption, government fee, and material enforcement result must be publicly reported and independently auditable.
Effective Date and Independent Fiscal Score
The tax system takes effect on January 1 following enactment, without a phase-in. Before that date, the government must publish an independent unified fiscal score using current official data, public assumptions, static estimates, behavioral estimates, and a complete accounting of the tax, spending, retirement, savings, emergency, MAQSTEM, development, health, and debt-repayment provisions. Revenue from penalties, tariffs, fraud recovery, improper-payment recovery, and the loan tax may be counted only when actually collected.
Automatic Inflation Indexing
Beginning on the first January 1 after implementation and on each January 1 thereafter, the Secretary of the Treasury must compare the annual average Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, CPI-U, published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the preceding calendar year with the annual average for the calendar year before it.
The resulting percentage change applies automatically to the individual and corporate income-bracket thresholds, the $6,000 child credit, the $6,000 unemployed-spouse credit, the $20,000 annual gift allowance, the $50,000 occasional-seller threshold, the $100,000 qualifying vehicle-financing limit, the $150,000 regular-income exclusion for a person age 70 or older, and every other fixed dollar threshold, credit, allowance, or exclusion in this federal tax policy unless the provision expressly states otherwise.
Bracket thresholds, allowances, exclusions, and other dollar thresholds are rounded to the nearest $100. Tax credits are rounded to the nearest $10. Inflation increases both thresholds and credits. Deflation may reduce the following year’s thresholds, allowances, exclusions, and brackets, but it may not reduce a tax credit. Tax rates, percentages, ages, and numerical limits such as the five-child or five-vehicle limits do not change through indexing.
Rates After Federal Debt Reaches Zero
The following exact marginal schedules automatically replace the debt-repayment regular-rate schedules when independently audited federal records certify that gross federal debt has reached zero. At the same time, the temporary 5% debt-repayment surtax ends automatically. No further vote, appropriation, agency rule, or presidential action is required to activate these rates or end the surtax.
Individual taxable income slice | Rate after debt payoff
$0 to $25,000: 1%.
$25,001 to $50,000: 2%.
$50,001 to $75,000: 3%.
$75,001 to $100,000: 4%.
$100,001 to $125,000: 5%.
$125,001 to $150,000: 6%.
$150,001 to $175,000: 7%.
$175,001 to $200,000: 8%.
$200,001 to $225,000: 9%.
$225,001 to $250,000: 10%.
$250,001 to $275,000: 12%.
$275,001 to $300,000: 14%.
$300,001 to $325,000: 16%.
$325,001 to $350,000: 18%.
$350,001 to $375,000: 20%.
$375,001 to $400,000: 22%.
$400,001 to $425,000: 24%.
$425,001 to $450,000: 26%.
$450,001 to $475,000: 28%.
$475,001 to $500,000: 30%.
$500,001 to $525,000: 32%.
$525,001 to $550,000: 34%.
$550,001 to $575,000: 36%.
$575,001 to $600,000: 38%.
More than $600,000: 39%.
Corporate taxable profit slice | Rate after debt payoff
$0 to $100,000: 1%.
$100,001 to $1 million: 5%.
$1,000,001 to $10 million: 10%.
More than $10 million: 15%.
Automatic Refund of Excess Federal Revenue
After the federal debt is fully paid, all audited federal revenue remaining after lawful expenditures, required Savings and Stabilization Fund and Strict Emergency Fund deposits, and any legally required restoration of those funds shall be returned proportionately to the individuals and businesses that paid eligible federal taxes during that fiscal year.
The original law creates a permanent standing appropriation for the refund. No additional annual appropriation is required. Refunds must be distributed within 90 calendar days after certification of the final fiscal-year audit. A refund is a return of excess taxation and is not taxable income. The money cannot be retained, redirected, carried forward, transferred, or reclassified, and payment cannot be delayed to manufacture an emergency, deficit, or funding need.
Core MPA standard: State every rate. Tax the same income the same way. Eliminate hidden exceptions. End the debt tax when its job is finished. Return post-debt surplus to the people and businesses that paid it.
WHAT WE WILL MEASURE
Public reporting should track compliance time and cost, filing and refund delays, appeal outcomes, improper penalties, tax-gap estimates, enforcement recoveries, administrative expense, and whether major tax preferences achieved their stated purpose.
Related policies: Federal Spending & National Debt; Cost of Living & Economic Security; Social Security, Senior Security & Retirement; Owner Rights.
Status: Proposed / Draft — not yet formally adopted.
Originally published: August 15, 2026.
Last updated: October 5, 2026.
Version: Draft 0.8.