The individual layer is aimed at people — the wealthy individuals whose effective rate has fallen below what middle-class workers pay. This layer is aimed at structures — the corporate ledger, the consumption side of the household budget, the offshore IP holding company, the tax-exempt institutional vehicle. None of the five instruments below is aimed at any particular person; each addresses a base-level failure that no individual-layer mechanism can reach.
One of the five — the flat payroll tax — is a substitute: it consolidates FICA plus the employer-paid health, dental, and vision premium that most employment packages already carry into a single 28% obligation, with the dental and vision pieces moving from optional employer benefit to universal coverage under Distributed Healthcare. It is not a new burden; for most employers and employees it is a lower one. Converting a regressive payroll tax to a flat one naturally cuts the other way at the top: individuals in the highest income brackets and firms with high per-employee compensation pay more. The other four — corporate book minimum, sales-factor apportionment, VAT with Pre-bate, institutional excise — close the corporate, consumption, and institutional escape routes.
None of these is rhetorically novel — every peer democracy uses some version. What the Accord does is wire them together so the individual layer doesn't leak through them.
One flat tax owed on compensation, substituting for the bundle most employment packages already carry: FICA (Social Security + Medicare) plus the employer-paid health, dental, and vision premiums. 28.0% total — 10.5% employee share (deductible from AGI), 17.5% employer share, due and payable on every dollar of compensation. No cap, no brackets, no rate-by-form distinction. For most employers and employees the total is lower than today's FICA-plus-premium bundle; converting a regressive payroll tax to a flat one naturally means individuals in the highest brackets and firms with high per-employee compensation pay more. Income-tax withholding on IRA and retirement distributions stays on top, unchanged. The comprehensive-base argument — every compensation form caught, not just paycheck wages — lives on the individual layer (§1 there); this section is the instrument and what it funds: Distributed Healthcare and the Social Stack. The Debt Sunset Governor adjusts the rate within a statutory corridor (26.5%–29.0%) in 0.25pp steps coupled 1:1 with the top income rate.
Restored 28.0% permanent rate (Year 6+) on taxable income, with a 15% book-income minimum as backstop. A firm pays the higher of (a) the corporate rate on taxable income or (b) the book minimum on financial-statement earnings. The book minimum does not depend on transfer prices, R&D credits, accelerated depreciation, foreign-tax credits, or NOL carryforwards — it depends on what the firm reports to investors. The two systems cannot diverge: a firm reporting tens of billions of book income to shareholders cannot simultaneously report zero taxable income to the IRS. A 4% buyback excise on net repurchases tips the boardroom calculus back toward dividends, R&D, and wages.
Multinational corporate income apportioned to the US by US sales share — not by where the IP is parked or the holding company is domiciled. A firm with $50B worldwide income and 40% of its sales in the US has $20B in US-apportioned income, regardless of where the IP, the headquarters, the cost-sharing arrangement, or the royalty stripper sits. Intercompany transfer prices become irrelevant to the apportionment math — they are within-group accounting that no longer drives the US base. The customers cannot be moved to Bermuda. The sales happened here. The profit is taxed here. Single-factor sales is OECD Pillar One's logic, fully implemented domestically.
Broad-base value-added tax at 10% on ordinary consumption (corridor 8%–12% via Debt Sunset). A higher luxury tier of 15% applies to category-specific thresholds — motor vehicles above $100K, watches above $2K, yachts above $100K, art and collectibles by published methodology. Universally paired with the Pre-bate: $3,480/adult/year delivered via FedCard on the 1st of every month — no application, no means test. The Pre-bate exceeds VAT incidence at the bottom of the distribution; a household consuming below a published envelope receives a net transfer. The United States is the only OECD country without a federal VAT; the architecture closes the gap while restoring progressivity through the universal floor.
Above the wealth threshold, charitable institutions are no longer categorically tax-exempt. Endowments, private foundations, and donor-advised funds pay the institutional-investment excise on portfolios above threshold — one-third of the lower of trailing 2-year and 5-year real S&P 500 returns, floored at zero (institution keeps two-thirds of real growth; long-run average ~1.4%, Sec 4968 equivalent). The architecture rejects the underlying premise that private charitable organizations do public good the government doesn't — US institutions providing security, resilience, and the continuity of constitutional democracy are public goods of equal standing, and concentrations of wealth benefit directly from them. Sovereigns are explicitly out of scope. Philanthropy at appropriate scale continues; what ends is the indefinite tax-free accumulation of donor-controlled wealth.