In Honor of the Evening's Results....

The tax proposals of the evening's winners:

Huckabee's tax proposal comes with a generous sprinkling of fairy dust: "When the FairTax becomes law, it will be like waving a magic wand releasing us from pain and unfairness."

And there will be no IRS. (If no IRS, it's not clear who will be administering the Fair Tax, or that monthly rebate we'll all be getting.)

It's not clear how this will work for businesses. Does this mean instead of deducting our business purchases we now pay additional tax on purchases of items for our businesses?

Still, I like the idea of that magic wand releasing us from pain and unfairness.

Obama on the other hand, seems to want to create the appearance of reform without actually changing much.

He plans to create a tax credit of up to $1,000 per family to offset the payroll tax they pay. (Don't the current refundable credits, such as the EITC and the additional child tax credit do this already?)

And, news flash, Obama will dramatically simplify tax filings so that millions of Americans will be able to do their taxes in less than five minutes. Obama will ensure that the IRS uses the information it already gets from banks and employers to give taxpayers the option of pre-filled tax forms to verify, sign and return.

(The IRS actually already does this in many instances; it just takes the agency about a year and a half to get around to it. It appears in the form of a CP 2000 notice, the "Uh, we think you forgot to report something" notice.)

Obama's other proposals are similarly underwhelming: A universal homeowner's tax credit for those who do not itemize deductions (wait, aren't we not itemizing because the amount of interest and property taxes we pay are less than the standard deduction already being offered to us -- in other words we're already getting a tax break beyond what we would have gotten by deducting our interest and property taxes).

And finally he wants to Eliminate the income tax for any American senior making less than $50,000 per year. This would actually be material for many people. Keep in mind, though, that the window between having an income low enough that you owe no tax and having taxable income of over $50,000 is pretty small for many seniors these days. That's largely due to how Social Security is taxed, which is a subject of its own.

Stay tuned.