As they say: nothing is sure in life but death and taxes. And in the District, those taxes are high. That may change, though.

According to an article published in the New York Sun today, Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), who chairs the Senate’s Appropriations Subcommittee on the District of Columbia, is mulling introducing a flat tax in the District. His intentions are not so much noble as they are inquisitive, though. Brownback referred to the District as a “laboratory” for a flat tax scheme that could then be implemented nationwide. Noted the article:

Brownback said that making D.C. a test case would, with limited potential for negative impact, provide valuable data about the effects of a flat tax that would prove helpful in determining whether it should be applied nationwide.

The flat tax would apply only to the federal income taxes District residents pay, not the three-tiered system of local taxes. The article quotes experts from the Heritage Foundation and the Tax Foundation, who argue that the flat tax would improve the city’s business climate and flood city coffers with additional revenue. Brownback and his staff similarly note that it may help attract back many of the middle class residents who fled the city’s high property taxes for Maryland and Virginia over the last decades. Opponents of the flax tax idea claim it places the burden of taxation on the poor and middle classes.