Webb's good politics, bad policy tax cut proposal

The good people at the Tax Foundation have a post up about Jim Webb's proposal to cut taxes for veterans. The proposal would give a 5% tax break for veterans. On the surface it sounds like a good idea, one that I might support. However, it deserves a little more scrutiny. Webb claims one of the things it would do is:

And one of the things that that would do, by the way, in my view, is to bring more people from across class lines into the military.

I suppose that may be true, but as the Tax Foundation points out

There are better ways to accomplish that goal rather than via the tax code whose complexity makes it to where you may not actually help those you are intending to help.

The best point made is this:

If the purpose of this proposal is to reward veterans for the value of their service that they have provided to society, why is the value of one veteran’s service a function of his/her current income?

Good question. To illustrate if veteran A makes $100,000 and veteran B makes $30,000, who is going to see the most benefit? Obviously veteran A. As the left would say, this is a tax cut for the rich. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see a 5% reduction for everyone (including the "rich"), but when you're trying to help veterans, income should not play a role. The only difference in reward should possibly be based on length of service and rank.

I would rather see our veterans rewarded in other ways. Cut them a check, raise their pay, increase benefits, but increasing the tax code complexity and rewarding only those who make enough to actually notice a benefit is the wrong way to do it.