Taxes on the Wealthy
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2011/08/19/Buffett-May-Be-Right-but-the-Top-Tax-Rate-is-Wrong.aspx#page1
Good read about taxes on the wealthy.
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My proposal: 20% flat tax on all income. No deductions. You could file your taxes in 10 minutes.
What about business expenses? Say I sell 1,000 cups of lemonade for $1 each. But I pay $300 for the raw materials and $200 for the labor. Do I pay 20% on $1000, 20% on $700, or 20% on $500?
Businesses would be a little trickier, I was speaking more to personal income taxes. Think it could ever happen? What do you think about the corporate tax rate?
Russia did this under Putin back in '01 and it vastly increased tax participation and government revenues, but their situation was a bit different than we have it here.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-06/uocp-ssr061609.php
A progressive tax system makes sense, but I think the upper income brackets should be extended (add 2-3 more brackets) and make sure everyone is paying. Close tax loopholes and simplify the system.
Bravo JS.
I also support eliminating tax credits and going to a flat 20% (or something close to it). Too much government intervention.
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/spending-in-disguise
I would have no problem with raising the tax rate on the wealthy as long as there is a huge decrease in the corporate tax rate.
Pardon my ignorance, but why would you want to do that? Corporations are sitting on enough money as it is right now.
0% tax on businesses and 15% personal income tax on everyone except the bottom 20%. 0.5% consumption tax on all consumer goods.
Who we will just shoot.
To be honest I laughed pretty hard at that.
No need to tax them. They don't pay income tax now anyway and it wouldn't make that significant of a difference, plus they are contributing on a voluntary basis with the half percent consumption tax. Much more fair I believe.
Good Luck convincing Main street America that they should be paying the exact same amount of tax @50K a year as the guy making $5MM and those evil corporations should pay 0%.
I totally agree on the flat tax 100% and makes complete sense, however a lot of Americans are just dumb. Not to mention you have to add in the fact that this will put a ton of people out of business and that most of our politicians are lawyers and/or have good buddies who a flat tax would negatively effect...
What are you talking about? Those "evil corporations" already pay 0% in tax. Hell, even the most ethical corporations (think Google) use loopholes to pay 0% in tax. The reason we call them "evil" is BECAUSE they use loopholes to pay 0% in tax. Actually making the corporate tax rate 0% would just bring the policy in line with reality.
Yes, because that would go over so fucking well on main street America. WTH are you talking about? The general population thinks / hates these 'evil' corporations because they use loopholes and pay little in taxes so lets just make the tax officially 0%? Yeah that shit is going to fly...
No way a flat tax flies with the general population with corporate tax rate @ 0%, regardless of what is the current reality.
X % of $50k is no where close to the same amount as x% of $5MM, that's why its a percentage. It is income level neutral. You earn more you pay more.
I understood what you meant though.
The only downside I see to a flat tax is that a whole bunch of people who made their careers around tax policy would be out of a job and essentially left with no relevant skills. The tax code is simply too damn complicated. Part of my weekend is going to be taken up by reviewing pages after pages of incredibly complicated tax memos that my company is paying tens of thousands of dollars to consultants to have prepared. What a waste of everyone's time...
That's not really a downside, the vast majority of people have fairly simple taxes and just use TurboTax or hire a CPA because they're too lazy to use TurboTax. The reason tax policy is such a booming industry is because of the infinite complexity around the impact taxes have on businesses and corporations.
The other enormous problem with a flat tax is how prone it is to government abuse. Let's say it starts out at 20%, but that's not covering the bills, so the government raises it to 25%. Holy smoke! Now the G has a whole lot more money to spend. Whoops, we overextended again! Now we have to raise the rate to 30%, etc...
Going to a flat tax by no means reins in the runaway train of government.
I don't see how that is much different from our current system. At least with a flat tax it would be harder to sell tax increases because every taxpayer would be affected. The progressive tax system, where the Government can threaten to raise the tax on "only" the top 2% to bring in more revenue while not angering the general population, seems much more prone to abuse.
The real reason tax policy will never be simplified is that you'd have a million tax accountants, tax lawyers and any number of other random jewish folk out of work.
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