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Ok let me preface this by stating I do believe our revenue codes are over the top and we could use some work.
I am not a proponent of flat taxes...now being called a fair tax.  There are a couple of candidates that are making that their campaign and such for this coming up election and let me shine a little light on some things when it comes to flat taxes.  I will use as realistic of numbers as possible.

The tax information came from http://www.fairmark.com/refrence/index.htm and is for the current tax year.
The Household income information came from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States and is for the year 2006.  These were also the joint family numbers.
We will assume that the income of every bracket is at the minimum for that bracket with the exception of the smallest bracket which we will assume is the largest amount available in that bracket.
These numbers were also based on a population of 1,000,000 people. 

Salary	-Over $357,700-|	|-$200,300-$357,700-|	|-$131,450-$200,300-|	|-$65,150-$131,450-|	|-$16,050-$65,150-|	|-Under $16,050-|
Base Tax	- $96,765	$44,823	$25,545	$8,970	$1,605	$0
% above base	- 35%	33%	28%	25%	15%	10%
% of pop in bracket	- 1%	1.67%	3.17%	27.09%	48.24%	18.63%
Assumed Income	- $357,700	$200,300	$131,450	$65,150	$16,050	$16,049
Bracket Income	- $3,577,000,000	$3,345,010,000	$4,166,965,000	$17,649,135,000	$7,742,520,000	$2,989,928,000
Rev. from Base Tax	- $967,650,000	$748,544,100	$809,776,500	$2,429,973,000	$774,252,000	$0
Rev. from %	- $913,272,500	$856,833,747	940,012,780	$3,804,790,500	$1,045,240,200	$298,992,870
Total Tax Rev	- $1,880,922,500	$1,605,377,847	$1,749,789,280	$6,234,763,500	$1,819,492,200	$298,992,870
Total Revenue from Taxes:	$13,589,338,197
Flat Tax Revenue	$357,700,000	$334,501,000	$416,696,500	$1,764,913,500	$774,252,000	$298,992,870
Total Revenue from Flat Tax	$3,947,055,870

Now to really look at this in perspective.  The concept of the flat tax has been sold to the lower income people, so in order to get it to go off the ground you cannot set their tax up higher than it is.  Currentlly they are paying 10% so you cannot make the flat tax greater than 10%.  In order to keep the income approximately the same you would have to raise the flat tax rate to 35% in order to get comparable levels of revenue.

Now take a look at this little table

Salary	-Over $357,700-|	|-$200,300-$357,700-|	|-$131,450-$200,300-|	|-$65,150-$131,450-|	|-$16,050-$65,150-|	|-Under $16,050-|
% of Tax Burder	- 13.84%	11.81%	12.88%	45.88%	13.39%	2.20%

I have said all of this for a simple reminder.  Yes the flat tax sounds good and wonderful and it would answer all the worlds problems....But there is something much more important that MUST be done first....control spending. 
If we do not control our spending and we convert to a flat tax...the poor are going to become poverty level, and the middle class the poor.  The rich remain unaffected for now. 

And quite honestly if we control our spending now...we would not need to change our tax codes. 

Just some food for thought when facing the decisions this year in the elections.

The state of Illinois has been imposing a flat tax since 1969 of 3%. The first $1,000.00 of income is exempt because of the personal exemption but all over that is taxable.

Illinois median household income has slipped by 10.3% since 1999 in comparison to a 2% slip nationwide in that same time frame. While the poverty level is going up at the same time to $17,170.00.  This has caused an 85% increase in those falling into the poverty level. The state of Illinois is considered a welfare state because of this.

Yes, there are other situations that have lent to this situation such as higher taxes and the removal of business breaks with higher restrictions on businesses causing many of the bigger businesses to move out of the state to areas that better benefit them but it still comes back to the flat tax. There is also the fact that new laws pushed through by Gov Blagoevich (against Federal laws) has lent to more illegal aliens coming to Illinois that are taking more jobs and driving up the consumer index.