Originally Posted by Relentless

It's much the same as our graduated income tax system.When you're in a "30 percent tax bracket," that doesn't mean you pay 30 percent of your income in taxes, or even 30 percent of your taxable income. Rather, it means that the "last portion" of taxable income is taxed at 30 percent. Under the system of marginal tax rates, every time your income crosses the line into a new tax bracket, the rate rises *only* for income above that line.

Anyone actually paying 30%+ on the first 174K of their income needs to fire their incompetent accountant and file amended returns to get their money back. You only pay the listed rate on any dollars over the dollar amount listed... not every dollar you earn. Yet people insist on acting like they pay 30% on all of their income while someone else plays 15%, when in reality they pay the same 15% on all dollars up to the first 34,500, And that doesn't take into account the fact that FIca maxes out at 106,800... So after 106,800 the total effective rate drops By 6% from FICA maxing out while the bracket rate itself rises by 5% after 175K....
10% on taxable income from $0 to $8,500, plus
15% on taxable income over $8,500 to $34,500, plus
25% on taxable income over $34,500 to $83,600, plus
28% on taxable income over $83,600 to $174,400, plus
33% on taxable income over $174,400 to $379,150, plus
35% on taxable income over $379,150

Of course, if you inherit a pile of money, as Romney did, and invest that money as Romney did, your taxes cap out at only 15%, you pay taxes on only the investment income not the principal and you didn't pay taxes on the principal in the first place though an earlier generation may have or may not have when they earned it. It is a tax scheme that hammers the middle class and anyone actually earning wealth via payroll but is awfully kind to trustfunders and badly misunderstood by most of the people it governs.

The tax code should be 2 pages long at most,not 3000 pages. Everyone should get a 50K yearly exclusion whether you make 30K or 500B in a year. No other loopholes. Every dollar over 50K gets taxed at the same flat rate no matter who you are, a rate likely to be 12-15%. Then add a 3-5% sales tax on anything except basic staples like home heating oil, milk and diapers. The rest of the two pages is a simple list of staple items like food, basic clothing and the like which are not sales taxed. Every year Congress looks at revenue and decides to raise or lower the income tax rate and the sales tax rate. Every American pays the identical percentage and gets the identical exclusion. The result would be incentive to save money, lower tax rates for most Americans and a large increase on the people who choose to spend a lot of money. Taxing what people earn makes much less sense than taxing what people buy.The guy with a similar plan was Jack Kemp, the republican VP candidate Bob Dole chose. The idea never garnered enough support, but it would fix our tax system very quickly, making it simple and fair.... Which is why accountant and lawyers lobbies hate the idea.