US to be eleventh flat tax economy?

With Romania recently becoming the tenth flat tax economy, the question I have been asking is which will be the first major country to make the change. There were rumours last year that George W Bush was considering a flat tax as one of the planks of his second term, although nothing concrete was mentioned during the campaign.

Now however he has appointed a commission to look at the whole area of the US tax code and given it until July to report.

One is tempted to say that if the US switched over, then the floodgates would open, and the rest of the developed world would follow, but this is probably too optimistic. From a UK perspective, even starting a debate on the subject would be a victory and realistically this is all we can hope for.