This week, the Conservative Reform Network (CRN) and Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) co-hosted a presidential debate on tax reform. I moderated the panel, and we had a keynote from ATR President Grover Norquist.

The event, held at ATR’s offices in the same room the weekly “Wednesday Meeting” is convened, was a full house of reporters, tax lobbyists, activists and a few interested citizens with a free morning on their hands.

It also served as the launch event for the tax chapter of CRN’s “Room to Grow” policy series, entitled Tax Reform for Our Century” (also coincidentally written by me).

Campaign representatives were there from (in alphabetical order) Governor Jeb Bush (Danny Heil), Senator Ted Cruz (Harold Furthcott-Roth), Governor John Kasich (Kerry Knott), Senator Rand Paul (Steve Moore), and Senator Marco Rubio (Jonny Slemrod).

The Cruz and Paul campaigns spent most of their time defending the VATs in their plans. They extolled the virtues of a VAT’s low rate and border adjustable nature, while defending against wage cascaded taxation and the European experience. Rubio and Bush reps defended some of the more controversial elements of their plan, such as a carried interest tax hike (Bush) and a second child tax credit (Rubio). For his part, the Kasich rep mostly defended his plan as practical and realistic from a budget perspective....

Read the full article at Forbes.com: Four Tax Policy Changes That Would Give Us The Biggest Bang For Our Buck