Stephen Moore reviews Steve Forbes’s new book, Flat Tax Revolution: Using a Postcard to Abolish the IRS, in the Wall Street Journal:  An Idea Whose Time Has Come — Just Not Here:

Unfortunately, many Americans have lost hope that the tax code really can ever be simplified. It is certainly true that every paralyzing regulation, carve-out, credit and deduction in the code was put there for a special-interest reason and will be difficult to dislodge. The very influence peddlers who tanked the Forbes flat tax in 1996 will fight to preserve their fiefs when the current system is next challenged. The flat tax is indeed what Mr. Forbes calls the ultimate "Washington versus America" battle.

But it is a battle worth fighting and, Mr. Forbes believes, a battle that can be won. Most of the ideas that he campaigned on in 1996, ideas that seemed so revolutionary back then — term limits, Social Security privatization, Medical Savings Accounts, capital-gains tax cuts — have since been adopted or are under serious debate. The flat tax is the last major Forbes reform yet to take root. Eventually, it will.

For prior TaxProf Blog coverage, see:

• Michael Kinsley’s review in the Washington Post, Steve Forbes’s Flat Tire
• Steve Forbes’s Wall Street Journal op-ed, One Simple Rate