The income tax only taxed the Rockefellers, the Morgans and the Vanderbilts. It was aimed at the top 4 percent, and the top rate then in 1913, was 7 percent. Woodrow Wilson had a big ceremony and said, "I'm delighted to be president at the creation of this popular new tax."

If you get rid of all these giveaways and loopholes and deductions and credits, then you can sharply lower the rates.

The Value-Added Tax, a sales tax that applies at every level of business transactions, is an easy tax for governments to collect, and a hard tax to evade.

We have the most expensive compliance system in the world. The IRS brags that they spend 35 cents for every $100 they collect. They're very efficient collectors. And the reason is they stick the real cost on you and me.

France, they're the world champion at soaking the rich on taxes. And at one point, they had what they called a hyper tax, 75 percent, and Gérard Depardieu and many others left the country.

President Trump repeatedly says that "America is the highest-taxed country in the world." This is an alternative fact. We pay less in taxes, and our government spends less, as a share of our total wealth, than our counterparts in Western Europe and East Asia. But Trump is right when it comes to corporate tax rates; the U.S. corporate income tax right is among the highest in the world.

Corporations use all sorts of complex stratagems to move their profits overseas, and thus escape the U.S. income tax.