A flat tax is what a flat world needs!

Sir much as I wholeheartedly agree with the intentions that John Christensen and David Spencer express in their "Stop this timidity in ending tax haven abuse" March 4, and that establishing a network of bilateral tax agreements will not be sufficient to solve the problem of world wide tax evasion, I do not believe that what they propose in terms of shifting the focus "towards the infrastructure of cross-border economic crime, including accountants, lawyers and financial institutions" will cut it either. On the contrary we could just be opening up new growth opportunities for those many illegal and illicit organizations that thrive so much on all our prohibitions.

What I would suggest is to go instead for a real worldwide tax transparency by making all countries sign up on an easy to understand world wide flat tax. This would help to remove the incentives to geographically arbitrate taxes and that keeps so many accountants, lawyers and financial institutions in the business "legal and intelligent tax avoidance"; and that keeps so many governments from not knowing whether they are giving true and needed tax incentives to attract investments or just being taken for a ride.

In all, a flat tax is precisely what a flat world needs; and by the way, just in case, a flat tax can be construed as a progressive tax too.

In immigration, more than barriers new riverbeds are needed

Sir Clive Crook in “How to untie the immigration knot” June 14 gives a glimpse of what is needed by arguing that instead of working on how to solve the 12 million stock of illegal immigrants the US would be better served by first working at the flow control valves. Doing that it is important to remember that the best way to control a flow is not always by building a barrier but sometimes by finding new riverbeds where it could run more orderly. It is in this respect that I believe FT’s readers could be interested in hearing about an initiative of trying to have private insurance companies stepping up to the plate and offer to guarantee the payment of a substantial indemnity to the US government for each worker who being favored by a temporary visa program does not return home in a timely fashion.

In immigration policy the perfect is also the enemy of the good

Sir, you write about “the mess over US immigration policy” May 9, and, as usually happens, most of the mess is created by those who want to court their followers by showing off that they want it all and perfect for them, when perfect, as always, is the enemy of the good.

Instead of what you imply I say for instance that if the price for getting some order back into immigration policies, before dirt hits the fan, is to have the migrants pay some punitive fees for their permits, so be it, that is still much better than having them paying the much more expensive punitive costs of not having permits. Let them put the price on the table and, after we haggle a bit, we will find the ways and means to help the migrants pay those fees.

That they must go home for extended intervals? Well we could argue about the length and the timings of such home-goings but it is not really a preposterous thing to ask of temporary work programs to include clauses that could keep their hearts warm to their homelands and lessening the risks of that heart-drain that could make their return much more difficult.

Sir, we sincerely appreciate your good intentions but please, don’t embrace us too much, and help us instead to get as many workable pieces of a solution formalized as fast as possible, before the problems get out of hand. Already having 12 million flesh and blood earthlings called illegal aliens is no minor problem.