I hear ya man, that's why I say all a flat tax does is tax the poor more and taxes the rich less, just to make the right wing bitchers happy. and just how are consumption taxes easier to administer? we already had one misguided liberal try to explain how underwear would be taxed based on the designer
I'm actually for a flat tax, if you had a high exemption and a high rate. Wouldn't hurt me much, but would make Warren Buffet cry if he had to pay the same rate his secretary pays. All dividends, cap gains carried interest etc taxed as ordinary income. I don't know what the exemption for a single man should be, somewhere between 35k and 70k. It should be based on average income and adjusted each year. I don't know what the rate when it kicks in should be, but very high. Like 40%. Be a bitch if you are sitting on the line and your 10k raise becomes only 6k after federal taxes, and you still have to pay state taxes on top of that. Oh well, this is the government we voted for and this is how much it costs.
The most economically efficient form of taxation is on wealth, not income or consumption. The problem with wealth taxation is governments who try any variant of it invariably retain the other taxes as well, defeating the purpose. Unless you are wealthy, in which case you can agree to pay back part of the normal fine and walk. By the way, is anyone here old enough to remember the "luxury tax" fiasco?
yes, a wealth tax is very interesting, it was the original tax talked about in the Bible. 10% of everything you own, good year or bad year. Explain to me how it would work. I would hate to see a little old lady have to sell her house she raised her family in because it is now worth more than she can pay the taxes on.
the funny thing about a wealth tax is, I really wonder how many U.S. citizens actually have a positive net worth. So almost nobody would owe a tax at the end of the year.
take the kid finally making 200k, but he owes 70k student loan, 12k credit card, 500k mortgage, 15k car loan...negative net worth, no taxes owed
The VAT starts out as a wealth tax, taxing the creation of value as opposed to the subsequent disbursements (to toil, as rents to capital, etc). But every country with a VAT then retained income taxes, etc.
oh man "toil" that is certainly not an American word. You sound like you may be from one of those other countries where they do actually have a VAT tax, so you should know what you are talking about.
Consumption taxes are easier to administer than ever! What a dumb question... Sales taxes are consumption taxes, they are programmed into Point of Sale Terminals.
yeah, a dumb question for you, you don't own a store so you are not going to be drafted into the federal tax collecting force. Let's just turn every merchant into a tax collector. What's one more regulation and one more federal agency they need to deal with? Doesn't anybody actually make money anymore? Or do we all just work for the federal government. Call it what you want, sales tax or consumption tax, makes no difference to me what you call it, it is just another way to keep taxing people when they have fallen on hard times and are no longer making income, because you need your fix no matter how bad the people in your community are doing. Easy to administer? Is that the new guideline? If it's easy to administer pass it. How bout a shit tax, and we just tax you every time you flush a toilet? Easy enough to administer, and the people who shit the most would pay the most. And a very stiff fine if we catch you doing it out in the woods. All we would need to do is hire some more wild life inspectors. When are you liberals going to give it up and stop taxing us every time we sneeze? Just because you can and it is easy? Taxes should be hard. Not easy. It should be very hard for you to tax me more and more.