Flat rate, 19% of income earned by every American. That means those with no income pay no income tax, but it also means they don't receive a refund for taxes they never paid. People with $1M income per anum pay $190,000.00 in federal taxes, period. No tax breaks including mortgage interest. None. No purchasing tax writeoffs, if your business loses money YOU lose money. No writeoffs of any kind. Everyone submits the same 1-page 8 1/2" x 11" income tax form. For people to receive Social Security they must show need. No rich guys collecting Social Security. Same with Medicare. Corporations pay 20% of total net profits in taxes. No exceptions. If the corporation makes no profit they pay no taxes. There I just solved at least half the problems of the country.
Come on OHMS. You know that isn't going to fly. First, a flat tax is going to totally remove any progressive structure to the tax system and shift the tax burden heavily from the rich to the poor and lower middle class. Second, businesses need to be able to deduct their costs of doing business. Otherwise they will all go out of business. Third, you are going to tell people they have to pay social security and medicare taxes but if they are not poor they can't use the benefits they paid their entire life into? It's all going to be much, much more complicated than that no matter what you do.
The rich need to be taxed more, they have all the wealth. Not everyone can be rich. If everyone in the U.S. worked their ass off and did everything they could, we still need janitors and lunch ladies. There are only so many good jobs. People who get these good jobs make plenty of money. People making a million plus a year should pay up. They can retire after a year, most have to work over 30 years to save that kind of cash. I'm down for a simplified tax system, with a few tiers of flat taxes. No exemptions, etc, I agree with you there. No write offs. Personally, the unemployed (non-retired) disgust me. They should not even be allowed to vote. The unemployed should get no benefits. If Obama cut all these bastards off, they would find work. There ARE jobs out there, just not the ones people like. They'd rather sit on their ass and wait it out, hoping a similar job appears. If they ever cut the unemployment extensions, the unemployment rate will drop to 7% or less mark my words!
1) Are you trying to cause leg 2 of the real estate collapse? 2) Fuck that. If I'm paying in, I want "my fair share" when the time comes.
If a person makes 1M how much should they pay? BTW, most folks making good work for themselves, and they work their butts off. Common sense business 101, you can't pay an employee what they are worth, the business needs to make a profit. Agreed, there's no incentive to take a lesser job while you're receiving unemployment.
The accountancy lobbyists would be up in arms. All kidding aside, the more you look at how our economy is structured, the more you realize that all of the complexity creates all of these cottage industries that would collapse under a more straightforward system. It's pretty much a given that adding more legalese to the tax code is probably heavily favored by accountants as it creates more billable hours, etc... Regarding the flat tax proposal, it's an improvement over the current system, but it needs a bit more nuance to really be something that I could embrace wholeheartedly. In conjunction with reigning in the powers of the Federal Reserve and their infinite money pump, things become more palatable. As it stands currently, the ability for IBanks to feed at the trough of the Fed is creating too much distortion and income inequality (no, I'm not a socialist), it's way too kleptocratic... Again, the tax code and the banking system/Federal Reserve are too interlinked currently to make a change on one end without seriously considering the implications with the other. You'd have to address both issues simultaneously.
I'm all for some sort of revenue neutral simplified and or flat/sales tax. I don't many career politicians supporting it though. It takes too much control out of their hands.