Tax reform has been the Holy Grail of conservative economists since the early 1990s. But after years of conservative ascendance in Washington, the tax code remains a mess.

Two major problems plague the flat tax, the retail sales tax, and other "big bang" tax reforms. First, utopianism. Ending the mortgage interest deduction might make perfect sense on a blackboard. But putting at risk the most valuable asset many taxpayers have is the equivalent of policy making suicide.

Second, many free market economists treat families as an after-thought. As far as they are concerned, the tax code should be "neutral" about raising children. In effect, they say the U.S. government should be indifferent to whether the people that created it exist in the future. What these experts fail to recognize is that Social Security and Medicare have created a huge fiscal bias against raising children, "crowding out" the traditional motive to raise children to protect against old-age poverty, a bias that would exist even in a mandatory saving program.

We suggest a different approach to tax reform, one that achieves the major conservative policy goals of a simple, flatter, and fairer tax-and can be enacted with broad bipartisan support. The proposal would simplify the tax code-no more itemizing, no more alternative minimum tax-cut marginal tax rates on capital investment and high-income labor (the activities most sensitive to marginal rates), reduce the tax burden on the middle class and below, treat married couples as equal partners, and offset the anti-parent bias in Social Security and Medicare.

Rather than re-creating the tax code from scratch or imposing new taxes, we would make the following changes to the existing code.

First, remove impediments to capital investment. Cut the corporate tax rate to 32 percent and make cash dividends fully deductible at the corporate level (taxable as regular income for individuals). Reduce the corporate tax rate-currently the second highest in the industrialized world-to encourage equity financing of new investment, raising worker wages, and improving the competitiveness of U.S. firms.

Additionally, let firms expense 25 percent of plant and equipment in the year of purchase. Replace the separate tax structure for capital gains with a 100 percent exclusion for gains up to $5,000 and a 50 percent exclusion for long-term gains above that level. Eliminate the tax on inheritances.

Next, scrap the individual alternative minimum tax and every itemized deduction except two: mortgage interest and charitable donations. Make these two deductions available to all taxpayers, not just itemizers. Reduce the limit on the principal amount on which interest is to be deducted, but only to keep the total amount of mortgage interest deductions the same as under current law. Similarly, for the charitable deduction, adjust minimums, maximums, and verification standards to keep the amount the same as under current law.

After deductions, individuals face only two income tax brackets: 15 percent and 32 percent. Make the 15 percent bracket twice as wide for married couples as singles to acknowledge that husbands and wives share their incomes. Then apply credits based on family size to reduce taxes owed.