"If my wife & I are in your 6.25% rate but we also pay for 2 kids to go to college, another kid who has high medical bills on top of my own high medical bills. While some single tax payer in the same bracket pays the same taxes? I want some deducts, please."

Barry, this statement, and millions like it, are why any meaningful tax reform is nigh impossible. You want deductions for your kids; I want interest and tax deductions on my home. Somebody else wants a deduction for expenses they incur on their job. So on down the line.

The deduction is that some amount of money--my example is 25K--is tax free. No system is perfect for every person or family. But what we have now is thousands of pages of regulations that no one understands. Even IRS employees don't understand; studies have shown that the same return will be evaluated differently by different IRS
employees if a taxpayer has a question...or, shudder, an audit. The goal is to find a system that is fairest in application to the greatest number of taxpayers, and is easily implemented.

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"I pay taxes & still get no representation,...." Please amplify. Are you not a citizen, therefore ineligible to vote? Do you generally vote the losing candidate or losing side of a proposition?
Are you eligible to vote, but don't?

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To those of you who gainsay the idea that taxing churches and keeping them out of the political sphere is taxation without representation, you are wrong. It is true that churches are businesses; I believe many are corporations or the equivalent.

If General Motors or XYZ Co. are allowed to lobby, are allowed to inform their employees of a political position...but not coerce them into a specific vote...then why not church leadership? If churches pay taxes, and the membership is not able to deduct membership donations, then those churches are not separated from the government, and should be allowed to take part actively in the political system. This is not to say that religious law is to be the law of the land, but that churches should be able to lobby for laws or support candidates, whose aims seem in concert with their religiosity.

I contend that either we have a separation clause, or we don't; we don't if churches are taxed.