As the summer of record temperatures and heated rhetoric comes to a close, it is time to look beyond sound bites and talking points when it comes to the fiscal health of our nation.

Recently, Warren Buffet called for raising taxes on Americans earning more than $1m per year and additional taxes on those American's earning more than $10m. Federal Income taxes account for 45% of all the revenue government receives.

So lets take Buffet's suggestion to the maximum extreme -- confiscate the rest of the after tax income from the super rich. This would only add additional $186 billion and reduce our current year deficit from $1.5 Trillion to $1.314 Trillion (still a big number). So lets take the rest of the income from those earning between $1m and $10m. Okay that drops our annual deficit down by another $266 billion. Now that we have completely confiscated all the income from those earning more than $1m, we still need to borrow well over a $1 Trillion dollars from other countries to pay for all our spending. Obviously, such an example is absurd.

Equally absurd is what is happening with the bottom 47% of wage earners (those earning $50K or less). Yes, nearly half of all taxpayers pay zero income taxes. Matter of fact the bottom 40% receives income from the federal government, meaning they receive more money in tax credits than they would otherwise be obligated to pay in federal income taxes. This is not to say they do not pay other taxes such as social security or medicare. They do. But when it comes to federal income taxes, our government's largest source of income (45%), they have a free pass. And that is a problem as it creates a climate for politicians pandering for votes.

As odd as it seems, taxpayers are turning into a minority in this country. Yet, we all benefit from military, justice, schools, roads and other infrastructure. Everyone one should pay something into the system whether you earn $100 dollars or $10 million dollars.

While we have both a revenue problem and a spending problem, the core issue is one of complexity. To put this in perspective consider the following:

Pythagorean theorem: 24 words
Archimedean principle: 67 words
The Lord's Prayer: 70 words
The Gettysburg Address: 272 words
The Ten Commandments: 286 words
The Declaration of Independence: 1,478 words
The US Constitution: 4,608 words
US Tax Code: 3,700,000+ words

Our tax code could use some serious editing. So how about a tax code that simply says:

- Every person pays a flat 25% tax on any income.
- Every business pays a flat 25% tax on their profits.
- All realized gains in stock are taxed at 25%, unless held for longer than a year, then 15%.

What would these laymen 38 words achieve? Besides no headaches during tax season, we could turn a divisive issue into a unifying one. We all contribute the same percent and nearly erase the current deficit. And that is without cutting any wasteful spending!