I live in HK so we have a flat tax system here, as well as low business tax. One of the reasons it works here is due to the Jockey Club, which controls the Lottery and the Horse Races (which is massive business) and they are officially a "non profit" organisation and they put back a huge amount of money into the economy, keeping the personal tax here low.

We also have no wealth tax, and there is a cut off point for people making low income where they dont pay any taxes at all...to be honest I dont know what that cutoff point is.

As mentioned by the OP, majority of people do their own taxes...most accountants dont handle personal taxes and concentrate on business tax. My tax form, is literally once sheet of paper, with things to fill out on both sides...simple.

We also have no sales tax, but the government is looking into implementing that in a few years (depending if it gets approved or not).

So my great great great grandkids selling my house and spending that money doesn't contribute anything? Do you think Bill Gate's relatives down the line won't be spending that money. Give a million dollar trust fund to a kid and he will contribute plenty to the economy because he is going to spend and/or invest that money.

well then why have taxes at all? If all taxes were gotten rid of I'd have more money to spend and that would help the economy wouldn't it? Roads and bridges would be shit. water and air would be ditrty, no garbage pick up, we couldn't afford a military or police or fire departments but hey no taxes that's great!

THINK before spouting off. You wish everything was like fantasyland and that is not reality.

The theory the fair taxers have is once companies are not being taxed, the price of goods would lower and it would cost the same as before the fair tax. There are weaknesses to that,shareholders like big profits so why give all of that up?Also bet your bottom dollar, if companies werent taking any taxes out of your pay. Wages would decrease, the theory being that tax money wasnt yours to begin with.

Well, now you have me confused. First you say that people shouldn't be given a free ride. That the great great great grandkids of Bill Gates shouldn't be allowed to have his money because they didn't earn it and there by are not contributing to society. Fair enough. I point out that if you give these people that money they will spend it, thereby contributing to society and the economy. Now you are on a tangent about taxes. Are you now saying they shouldn't get that money because they won't have had to pay taxes on it? I never said do away with taxes.

Ok. I just went back and re-read previous posts. I think your point is that they get tax free money so that money isn't going towards the tax base eventhough they are living in the country and they are getting the benefits of that tax base. Fair enough. But let's be honest, the amount of people something like this effects is very small and the amount of money they would pump into the economy would far outweigh any taxes they may pay if they had a job.

Say for example you have average person number 1 and they make the national average of 42K per year. They have a spouse and 2 kids and pay around 4K annually to federal taxes. Great. Now you have bill gates great grandkid who has a trust fund someone up the line set up for them that has 10 million in it and it pays out at 300K per year. They are going to spend and invest that money. So if they go out and buy a 100K car then that money is passed to someone else who eventually pays taxes on it. So some taxes do eventually come out of the money, but I would venture to guess if this person lived in say, Seattle, them dumping their 300K a year in trust fund money into the Seattle economy is far more beneficial to society as a whole than if they had a job making 42K a year and were paying 4K a year in taxes.

The rich SHOULD get tax breaks. THEY are the people who build businesses and provide JOBS for the underprivelaged! Come on now! If you aren't smart enough to make money in America, you should get TAXED!

Flat tax won't work. It'll just keep middle class and under poor.

Here's a book to check out.
http://www.amazon.com/Flat-Tax-Wont-.../dp/1886039283

Think of all the deductions there are... Those are all now being taxed. It just makes it easier for people to understand, harder for rich people to skirt taxes, and gives the government less tinkering control. They can either raise the rate, or find other ways to make money.

I heard a story that Warren Buffet once was speaking at a conference full of multi millionaires, billionaires etc.. And he offered to write anyone a $1,000,000 check if they could prove to him that they paid less taxes as a percentage than their secretaries did.. And nobody stepped forward. They all pay less, because there's so many deductions and ways to move your money around, defer, this and that.. All that would go away.

You are retarded. If America wasn't America then they couldn't be rich. The soldiers that make sure America stays free should be taxed but the rich shouldn't? The police and firemen that protect the rich from crime and fire should be taxed but a rich guy shouldn't? The construction worker that builds and maintains the roads and bridges the rich guys drives on should be taxed but not the rich guy?

Fuck the man for trying to hold us down

Listen the budget for 2008 is $2.5 TRILLION. There are 140 million taxpayers. Do the math that is $18,000 per taxpayer if you you want a tax system where eveyone pays an equal share. How does someone making minimum wage which is $12,000 pay $18,000 in taxes? What is "fair" about that?

Did you read the customer reviews? ;)

- Throughout this book the same thought kept occuring in my brain: The author, Hicko, is an accountant and tax preparer by trade. Of course he doesn't want a flat tax. His profession is the only one that loses under a simple tax code. This book is just a bunch of class warfare dribble that went out of style in 1975. Forbes' book, Flat Tax Revolution, is much better.

- A book of even greater myths.
He misses the fundamental flaw in the entire plot.
America is not a complicated economy. It may be many faceted which is very different from complicated. What is complicated is an organization that spends its time looking for never ending ways to justify taking money from its productive citizens. Calculating and grading every profitable venture in a myriad of complicated ways to invent and justify ploys to squeeze out more and more taxes. It is a marvellous game with a cast of tens of thousands uselessly employed in a cat and mouse game that could well be employed in a proper job where there was something to market and the end of a day's work. Where their activity made the GDP greater at the end of the day than it was in the morning.
The less people involved in collecting taxes the better for the country. The simpler the system the less wasted labor in administering it the better.
The true fact is the IRS has only ever got more complicated, employed more people, made more rules, got more difficult to follow and created more accountants jobs as people in despair turn to specialists in almost a vain effort to comply with their never ending changes in rules. And you think you can fix this with a bit of fiddling at the edges? Dream on.

No one has to date despite the massive efforts than have been put into it trying. As I said you can't fix something that is fundamentally flawed in the first place. Endlessly figuring out ways of taking money from the producers that have to give to the unproductive have nots is about as communistic as they come.
I hope your red card is fully paid up Mr. Hicko.

etc.. Most people rated it 1star.

Since when does the money paid in taxes have anything to do with the number of taxpayers? How many taxpayers does Bill Gates and Microsoft corp alone cover? If a rich guy makes 100x what a poor person makes, he'll be paying roughly 100x more, about as fair as it gets.. No penalty for being productive, or saving money.

PS: You may want to start by politely asking your government to lower the "defense" budget.

Wikipedia: For 2007, the budget rose to US$439.3 billion.[1] This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget, such as nuclear weapons research, maintenance and production (~$9.3 billion, which is in the Department of Energy budget), Veterans Affairs (~$33.2 billion) or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (which are largely funded through extra-budgetary supplements, ~$170 billion in 2007).[2] Conversely, the military budget does allocate money for dual-use items, such as the development of infrastructure surrounding U.S. military bases. Altogether, military-related expenses totaled approximately $626.1 billion.[3]

U.S. military budget is almost as much as the rest of the world's defense spending combined [7] and is over eight times larger than the official military budget of China. (Note that this comparison is done in nominal value US dollars and thus is not adjusted for purchasing power parity.) The United States and its close allies are responsible for about two-thirds of the world's military spending (of which, in turn, the U.S. is responsible for the majority).

if you have a flat tax then everyone pays the same % of their income for tax...which means the guy making 12k a year wont be paying 18k in taxes...and in most countries that have the flat tax system people making less than a certain amount dont pay taxes.

Well I never said the current system is great or a different approach isn't need. But pure flat taxes or this national sales tax is NOT the answer. Yes Bush espoused about having a simpler tax system when he ran in 2000 then promptry added a a 6th bracket to the tax code. Um MORE brackets is SIMPLER? Hey about 3 tax brackets? Because you are either poor, middle class or rich. I'm all for getting rid of most exemptions and instead just have lower rates. As it is now it's all a shell game.

Then you get the same people bitch about who the poor don't pay ANY taxes though they in fact do. These people conveniently forget about FICA, sales, gas, property taxes etc etc

I dont see a flat tax working in the US (it works fine in Hk where I live) but something needs to be done with the current system, instead of streamlining the process they seem to just keep adding more and more hoops for people to jump through...

Wow gets even more scary...

The recent invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are largely funded through supplementary spending bills outside the Federal Budget, so they are not included in the military budget figures listed above.[13] In addition, the United States has black budget military spending which is not listed as Federal spending and is not included in published military spending figures. Other military-related items, like maintenance of the nuclear arsenal and the money spent by the Veterans Affairs Department, are not included in the official budget. Thus, the total amount spent by the United States on military spending is higher.

My point was that after an adjustment period, people would get used to price tags including the tax. So there wouldn't be any of this, I have $x but I can only spend $x because of tax.

The flat tax principle is a nice one. In Andorra - where we are, there is no income or capital gain tax. Everyone pays a flat tax per year (which isn't too much!) and on everything imported from EU they first remove the VAT from EU and then add an import tax on it - which is actually lower than VAT in EU! The system works great here.:thumbsup

Every politician saying you need all existing taxes, is just trying to make sure he can keep living in his luxury villa ... :2 cents:

You're right GatorB. Hong Kong, etc.. are all fucked. They can't sustain that kind of taxation. Riiiiggghhttt.

:pimp

Lot of fun arguments going on here. I'll just sit back here and watch! My only gripe is the death tax and people who think it needs to be taxed. It was already taxed once. :2 cents:

This is the one tax I do not mind. I think death is a great time to pay taxes. If they raised this one and lowered my yearly tax i would be ecstatic.

Flat tax or brackets does not make much of a difference. That is the easiest part of the tax calculation, looking at the table. It is the endless deductions and phasing out of these deductions for higher income etc. Alternative minimum tax and all that BS too. A simpler system could evolve just buy streamlining what we have.

your Gates analogy assumes the money in question is not already a part of the economy... which would basically mean it is in a vault somewhere or under someones pillow. thats not how an economy works. they don't have to personally run around spending it for the economy to benefit from it or from their wealth.

For those who shelter their money or have aggressive tax strategies, I'm not sure how they would pay MORE. It means they would hide or plan LESS.

I'm all for a flat tax. I'm against any other method and think its criminal.

Stop thinking. You're embarrassing yourself... :2 cents:

First of all, I didn't cause the country to go into debt. I have to manage my books, why don't they? Why do we have to pay for their shit? The only real reason we pay taxes is to pay on the debt that the country owes. It's not my debt. I've paid off all my debts. Took me several years to get out of my hole, without the governments help. Now I don't want to help them. But it's criminal to do so.

To add, I'm an expat so I don't see any reason I should be paying taxes to the US anyway. Fuck them. They get just a little bit from me now, not a penny more.

You are not paying for the war. You are paying for the country BORROWING money so we can go to war. I read somewhere that the USA borrows something like 3 billion dollars a day to keep it afloat. That is total fucking madness. Why should you or I pay for that? Did anyone call you and ask you if you approved of them borrowing money? Do we have a choice? Of course not. Slaves all US citizens are.

What's fair is the government pays for their own mistakes and debts. Let expats totally free of the tax system (why tax people who don't even live, work or earn in the country?) and do a flat tax for those who do live in the country. :2 cents:

Wrong.

There are several creative and LEGAL ways to lower your taxes to about nill. All legal. Sorry if you don't know what those ways are. But do your homework and educate yourself.

the national debt and income taxes have no connection to each other

:2 cents:

"100% of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal Debt ... all
individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services
taxpayers expect from government."
-Grace Commission report submitted to President Ronald Reagan - January 15, 1984

True and even if the money were sitting in a trust fund, taxes have already been paid on it when it was earned (or paid when it was taken out depending on how the fund was set up). I have a feeling Gator just doesn't like the idea of rich kids getting a free ride. (I'm not crazy about it either)

Really?, I'm sorry too. :(

Will these creative ways you speak of survive an audit???

You know, you can write whatever you want to on your tax return, doesnt mean anything until you get audited :2 cents:

The legal ones, by definition, will do just that... :1orglaugh

you = retarded

do yourself a favor and read up on how the debt is paid.... instead of searching google for 30 minutes trying to find an argument.

Ok, now you are just talking out of your fucking ass. I didn't spend 30 minutes searching for something like this quote on Google. I already knew about this study they did back then. It took me 10 seconds to find the exact quote.

How about you share your wisdom with us fucktard? What did I say about how debt is paid that is not correct? :321GFY

I would love a flat tax. Would be fair for everyone and make filing taxes easy. I can't stand the current system where I have no fucking clue what is going on in my tax returns.

I think that was more because capital gains tax is must lower than regular income tax. I'm sure Buffet pays a ton of taxes still.

And for those touting the FairTax (national sales tax), there are just too many holes in it. First, it's a regressive tax that hurts the poor and helps the rich. Middle class families will end up paying 20% of their income to the government while billionaires will pay .0001%.

Second, used products don't get taxes. What stops me from owning a car dealership, selling each new car to my brother for $1, then buying that car back for $2 and selling it used on my lot for whatever price I want? It would cause a huge black market for un-taxed goods and hurt businesses who play by the rules. Why go to the grocery store to buy fruit when the local fruit stand isn't tacking on sales tax? Why buy music, books, DVDs at the store when you can buy bootlegs for much cheaper? Stolen merchandise also becomes much more lucrative.