Utah's new governor has been flirting with a flat tax since winning office in 2004. As it stands now, Utah has a graduated income tax with most Utahns paying the maximum 7% and Governor Huntsman is trying to flatten it out to 4.6%. But Utah is Utah and when the LDS Church announced its opposition to something, you can stick a fork in it:

Hughes does not lay the death of a true flat-rate tax at the feet of LDS Church leaders. A number of "stakeholders," including other charitable groups, have been lobbying legislators recently over keeping their deductions, he said.

"We want a full discussion, especially by some groups that have an interest in these deductions but who have not been heard before," said Bramble. It will be their chance, he said, to show their concerns, and tax force members chance to show them that even if they lose their specific deduction, income-tax payers who take their deductions will still be better off because of an overall lower tax rate.

A true flat-rate income tax without deductions would have had tough going in the Legislature in any case, with around 80 percent of lawmakers being members of the LDS Church.

Utah is, of course, something of a special case because of its ties with a singular, very heirarchial church.

But it is interesting for a couple of reasons. As I am personally opposed to the Flat Tax, I don't lament its failure there. But I am very much in favor of a simpler tax system analogous to Dick Gephardt's 10 Percent Plan way back before the end of the end of the era of big government. Simply put, it's not so much the "inequities" of different people paying different percentages of their income in taxes - or even the money paid itself - that is utmost on my list of concerns, but rather the extremely complicated nature of the tax code and all the tax cuts and tax breaks aimed at specific interests both business and personal.

And here we have one of the three most conservative states in the nation can't get it passed due to one of the most reliably Republican religious institutions in the country. Utah being a special case aside, a whole lot of Republican support comes from religious organizations. The religious organizations, of course, are helped by their tax-deductable fundraising capabilities. When up against this in their own party, is there really any way that the tax code can be simplified? Only if the Democrats do it, except that as with so many issues, conservatives can only get so frustrated with Republicans because they don't walk the talk before they realize that Republicans are the only ones even talking the talk.