A new way to fund the nation

Unburden America is built around a simple idea:

America is still taxing work, wages, and productive activity as if that were the best way to fund a modern economy. It is not.
The current tax system leans heavily on earned income, payroll, and business activity. At the same time, the financial system moves enormous volumes of money every
year through large-scale settlement infrastructure that is largely outside the tax base we rely on today.

Unburden America argues that this mismatch matters.

It matters for workers whose paychecks are squeezed.
It matters for employers who are taxed when they hire.
It matters for small businesses trying to grow.

And it matters for a country facing an unsustainable debt path.

What the plan does

The proposal combines four core ideas:

1. Tax a modern base

Instead of relying so heavily on taxes on work, the plan applies a settlement-based toll to large-scale U.S. dollar financial flows.

This means focusing on measurable cash settlement inside the core machinery of the financial system not on ordinary household payments, and not on inflated notional values.

2. Cut taxes on work

The plan is designed to reduce the tax burden where Americans feel it most: on earned income, paychecks, and the cost of employment.

The proposed framework includes:

an Income-Adjusted Standard Deduction
payroll taxes cut in half for workers and employers
a stronger Earned Income Tax Credit
an expanded and fully refundable Child Tax Credit

An Income-Adjusted Standard Deduction means that:

the first $75,000 of income would be tax-free for married filers
the first $37,500 would be tax-free for single filers
the first $56,250 would be tax-free for heads of household

The goal is simple: let people keep more of what they earn, reduce the tax cost of hiring and supporting workers, and ease the burden on productive businesses as the tax base is modernized.

This is broad-based tax relief, but it is structured so that the biggest gains go to working people, families, and lower- and middle-income households.

3. Protect and strengthen Social Security and Medicare

Tax relief does not come at the expense of the programs people depend on.

Under this proposed framework:

Social Security is fully backfilled and reinforced
Medicare is fully backfilled and reinforced

That means the plan is designed to reduce the burden on work without weakening core earned-benefit programs.

4. Pay down the debt

A central purpose of the proposal is to use the new revenue base to accelerate federal debt reduction. The US debt is currently over $39 Trillion. Unburden America does not treat debt as a side issue. It treats it as a structural problem that requires a structural answer.

And every year we delay, the country spends well over $1 trillion on interest on the debt money that could be directed to higher priorities instead.

Why this approach is different

This is not just another tax increase, and it is not a conventional financial transaction tax.

The proposal is built around a narrower and more disciplined idea:

tax actual U.S. dollar cash settlement
tax it once
tax it where it settles
avoid double counting
keep ordinary consumer economic life out of the direct base

That is what makes the proposal different from many older transaction-tax models. It is not built around a broad tax on everyday market activity. It is built around a measurable settlement base inside the core financial infrastructure.

A note on the origins of the idea

Unburden America did not invent the broader insight that the modern financial system processes enormous monetary flows that are not meaningfully reflected in the tax base we rely on today. That foundational idea has been developed and articulated powerfully by leading financial pioneer, Scott A. Smith, whose work helped bring this question into focus. His book, Fixing America: The Financial Freedom Plan, presents a much broader version of the concept, including replacing all current taxes with a 0.5% fee on the flow of money and pairing that with a larger Banking 2.0 framework.

Our proposal builds on that core insight, but takes a narrower and more implementation-focused approach. Unburden America is focused on introducing a financial settlement flow tax, reducing payroll and income taxes, protecting and strengthening Social Security and Medicare, prioritizing debt reduction, and supporting productive business activity through targeted tax relief.

Readers who want to explore the broader conceptual foundation of this idea should read Scott’s work as well.

Why people are paying attention

People on the left and the right disagree about plenty. But there is broad frustration around three things:

ordinary Americans are financially squeezed,
the tax code feels outdated and unfair,
and the national debt path is unsustainable.

Unburden America argues that these are not separate problems. They may all point back to the same structural issue: we are trying to fund a modern nation with a tax base built for a different era.

And when the country is constantly fighting over how to pay for basic priorities, political division gets worse. A stronger and more modern revenue base would not eliminate disagreement, but it could reduce some of the zero-sum conflict that now dominates public life.

What to explore next

If you want to go deeper:

See How It Works for the mechanics of the plan
Read the FAQ for objections, comparisons, and answers
See Methodology and Sources for definitions, assumptions, exclusions, and supporting materials

And if you want the full case, read the white paper