Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin-SFBucks
I know it's not popular amongst the poor or less well to do, but what's wrong with taxing every dollar/transaction in America at the same rate and budgeting with those numbers? Why different rates depending on how you earned it? What portion of your income it was part of (your first 15k in earnings?)
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The fairest tax scheme is a flat tax with ONE exclusion for all taxpayers.
1) Every person, whether they earn 1 billion dollars in a year or 22,000 dollars in a year get's the first 50K tax free. You pay 0% on the first 50,000 dollars you earn.
2) Every penny, no matter how much or how little, above that 50,000 gets taxed at one flat rate (most economists believe that rate would be around 15-17%). There are no other deductions or exclusions.
In that scenario:
Earn 0-50K you pay 0 taxes
Earn 100K you pay 15% taxes on 50K
Earn 1,000,000 you pay 15% taxes on 950,000
Earn 1,000,000,000 you pay 15% taxes on 999,950,000
That means every poor citizen gets to live tax free BUT everyone else is getting the same 50K tax free that poor people get. The middle class, upper class and barely rich would all have their tax bills lowered by a significant percentage as well.
It is NOT poor people who are against a flat tax, it is VERY wealthy people who are against it. If you are worth a billion dollars thanks to an inheritance, you can simply invest that principle amount in tax free municipal bonds and live in luxury off the interest without ever paying a single penny in taxes. There are all kinds of ways to shelter money, but most don't work if you are poor, middle class or barely rich... they work if you are wealthy.
In the tax plan I stated above, people who are worth 1 billion dollars and who earn 30 million a year or more in tax free 'interest revenue' would suddenly be paying 4.5 million a year each instead of paying zero. That is why it never gets passed.
Very wealthy people pay far less than 15% on average. Many pay close to zero... and they don't want anyone fucking that up for them just so barely rich people can pay less than 30-50% of their income. The guy with a billion couldn't give a rat's ass how much some webmaster making six figures a year has to pay.
* The one thing you misstated in your analysis is the idea that one person gets one vote. That it patently false. Your vote does not count as much as the vote of a billionaire. It's not even close. For example, Rupert Murdock owns Fox News and gets to influence millions of voters (and he's Australian), Michael Bloomberg gets to speak out as the Mayor of New York and gets to shape the public perception of governmental policy through his Bloomberg news service, Oprah gets to tell idiot housewives from the midwest how they should vote. You get one vote and MIGHT be able to influence a handful of others. Wealthy people get one vote, get to influence the masses AND get to make huge campaign contributions that buy them significant access to politicians far beyond anything a normal citizen might ever get.
