There's going to be government. It's going to cost money. Somehow that's got to be paid for. There are going to be taxes.
As an aside, I'm reminded of the Oliver Wendell Holmes quote "Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society". I tend to think he had it backwards. The extent of our taxation reflects the degree to which we are not civilized. In a truly civilized society, we would not have to be forced to pay in order for necessary things to be accomplished. Taxation is a measure of our failures.
Anyway, there are a few starting points. My prejudices, I suppose.
I have nothing against the estate tax. I don't see why it should extend beyond maybe the top 1% of estates, but I think it serves a useful function in terms of reducing "accidental wealth" (as opposed to "earned wealth"). It's sometimes decried as double taxation, but who's being doubly taxed? Certainly not the deceased; death is 100% taxation since you can't take it with you. Certainly not the heirs.
I approve of graduated/progressive taxation. I hear the equality arguments. That's part of why I'm loathe to support steeply graduated rates or particularly high top marginal rates.
And I approve of universal taxation. We all need to have "skin in the game". How that's accomplished in practice remains to be worked out. (Do keep in mind that one need not being paying specifically federal income taxes in order to have 'skin in the game'; everyone employed pays FICA and medicare. On the other hand, one can't really consider sales taxes since they're state revenue and not every state even has these. Real estate taxes are effectively paid by everyone (if only via higher rent) but again that's not federal. One might, however, consider that corporate taxes are paid by everyone through higher prices.)
Also, tax simplification is good. I might consider an approach like this. Initial legislation will provide that next year the income tax bracket rates will be 90% of current, the year after they'll be 80% of current, and so forth until the 5th year from now they'll be half of what they are now. However, this law is 'revenue neutral'. Assuming Congress is ready to make these decisions, the initial legislation provides that lost revenue will be made up by reductions in deductions, exemptions, credits, etc. as specified. Assuming that they're not, the initial legislation provides that if Congress fails to enact any or sufficient offsets, then default offsets will kick in sufficient to make up the revenue shortfall. The default offsets will be determined along the lines of letting the Ds target defense while the Rs target entitlements. Default offsets will be taken 50/50 between these two areas. This is something like NYS school budgets where contingency budgets include just about everything except popular stuff like extra school busing and athletic programs. The idea is to provide lots of motivation.
In order to actually clean up the tax code rather than simply have every/most deductions/exemptions/credits simply reduced by 90%/80% and end up at 50%. Some limitations will be included in the initial legislation along the lines that major revenue expenditures must be cut in atleast 25% intervals and minor revenue expenditures must be cut at least by half.
Let's also give a thought to perpetuities. Generally it's considered bad public policy when someone long dead is still controlling assets through provisions of their will or a trust. (at least I think this is so; will need to confirm.) In some respects, a vast personal fortune passed down through family inheritance is something like a perpetuity. And probably also not especially good public policy (lending support to an estate tax). In even greater respects, corporate wealth is very much like a perpetuity as the 'person' never dies and the assets are never distributed (beyond voluntary dividends which are only a partial distribution). Just observations to keep in mind.
