Flat Tax or Tiered Tax in US?
 

Okay, that last post I made about taxes got me thinking...

I really hate our current tax system. I feel it's really silly that 95% of our taxes are paid by 10% of the population. i understand that there's no "easy" way to fix the problem, but I bet we could come up with some pretty good ways to do so being that most of us are somewhat capitlist and somewhat democrat ... I'm a healthy mix of both.

Basically What do you guys think? Flat Tax? Tiered Tax? Something in Between?

flat tax! flat tax!

Flat would be nice.

a flat rate tax (that is, flat as in percentage) would still mean 10% of the people would pay 95% or so of the tax, but i think it would be more fair overall.

i'd like to see the federal tax reduced significantly and then leave it up to the states to collect the bulk of the income taxes. the federal government is just too bulky.

Flat Tax with reformed deductions.

The extremely wealthy hardly pay any taxes at all. they dont have any income and they set up corporations spend all their pre-tax income.

lol ... that just makes them intelligent.

I had enough tax write-offs last year to bring me down to "poverty level" income .. I only paid 2 or 3% of my income into tax last year (for a total of $1700 in income tax), and got $980 BACK last year :thumbsup

Should you be bragging about that? Just a thought.

Rory
:helpme

This is the lie used by politicians to win over the less educated, less affuent of us.

The flat tax is the way to go. Once lower income people start feeling the tax bite every time they vote themselves a new handout, maybe they'll rein in the wild spending of our politicians and we'll regain some sanity in our governmental spending.

A flat tax is great in theory, but would have many of it's own problems. The upper 10% would only find new ways to disguise, divert, and launder money.

:2 cents:

fuck taxing hard working people just for making money.

Here's the #1 reason I think income tax sucks.

I make my money. let's say 250,000. The goverentment would take 97,500 (assuming no deductions =). leaving me with 152,500

From that 152 - I pay a person 25k a year to do housework. the government would tax that 25k again - getting 3750 more.

The housekeeper uses 4k of that money - to hire a teenager to baby sit her kids. The government is going to tax that 4k a third time - and get another $600.

Scrap income tax altogether - don't penalize a person for making money - hit them when they spend it - on a Sales Tax - that's why they call it a "progressive" tax. It's old school - but it works.

Need roads improved? - use the tax you collect off car sales.
Need money for school? - use the tax you collect off alcohol sales
need money for jails? - use the tax you collect off of crack/pot sales

(but don't tax things necessary for life - water, food, etcetera)

~brett

If you have income - the gov't takes up to ~ half your money.

Anything up to ~80K - they take a nice ~15% cut for self employment taxes + what you pay in FED + STATE taxes.

The rich don't have any way to get out of paying income tax (that I know of - please give me pointers if you know how).

they do get a break after the 80K level for self employment tax, but they have to pay higher federal taxes.

The wealthy (or anyone else, but most poor people don't have stocks) - can take advantage of a 20% capital gains tax on assets held over a year - which is a fairly nice tax break.

However, they already paid tax on the income they got to invest it in the first place.

I have read these books like "rich dad poor dad", "loop holes for the rich", and "how to pay zero taxes", but the only people that pay 0 taxes as far as I can figure are poor.

The have nice suggestions on how to (for example) use a c corp to get a medical reimbursement plan for yourself, but these advantages don't really add up like they claim they do.

If you have a million dollars in INCOME a year - you are going to have to pay some pretty heavy taxes - or risk going to jail.

small example chris.

company does 2 million a year in revenue. let's say it could run 1.2 million in profit. That's 100,000 a month. Let's say there is 1 owner.

so the owner could take 100,000 as salary. OR - he could write off his meals, cars, house, travel - plane and hotel, art, parties - retirement account. a person could write off 35-40+ k.

at 100,000 a month-
company claims 40k in expense
personal income 60k
income tax 23,400 instead of 39,000.

By a little careful tax planning that person just netted 15,000$. Our current system has plenty of little gems ripe for taking advantage of. Since there are tax advantages to buying houses - maybe the person wouldn't list that under the company but instead under personal assets. bottom line - there are plenty of ways around paying your "fair share"

But tell me what would be wrong with a purely sales tax based system?

~brett

Ya know, I remember this argument in government class.

A purely sales tax oriented society would still hit poor people harder, as a percentage of their income. if they have to spend 15k a year to survive, thats taxed, if they make 17k or 25k. for someone making 100k, and only spending, say, 45 of it, thats still a major percentage difference. (most of the income or less than half of it.)

I think the flat tax would be a better option, as long as there arent that many exclusions. Thats the problem with the system, those that are rich can afford to take more deductions (mortgage vs rent, capital depreciation, etc)

I don't see why not .. seems perfectly legal to me. :-)

ahh... but you don't tax the stuff that people "need to survive" ie food (isn't taxed). water, shelter, etcetera. and No - you don't need a 5000 sq ft home to survive - - (make a reasonable allowance for what the cost of shelter should be in a given geographic area)

oh yeh - and - you're right it would still effect them more - as a percentage of their total earnings -

but Fuck'em - they are poor. who cares?

tell them to go get a fuck'n job!! =)

~brett

well if your dick is as big as yours you do...