I am strongly in favor of a progressive income tax because....

[WCGreen]

those who benefit the most from our economy and our political system should pay the most...

What say you...

[Scuba]

1. Yes, but right now we only have a (mildly) progressive payroll tax....

...we need a progressive capital gains tax.


That would easily solve all our revenue problems.

[phasma ex machina]

7. How about we just take OUR money back from the banksters and call it even?

Those ***kers can fund their OWN war machine.

[BOHICA12]

14. Sorry, but our payroll tax is regressive ... as any flat tax is.

Our income tax is theoretically progressive, unless your income is entirely capital gains.

[The Magistrate]

2. Mr. Smith, Sir, agrees With You

His clearly expressed view was that, as the wealthy benefit most from the ordinary operations of government, they ought rightly bear a share of its cost in proportion to that greater benefit.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. I agree, even though it would mean that we pay more.

I remember traveling in Canada, and feeling upset about how high their sales tax was...

Until I learned how well they take care of their citizens. Then I felt a lot better about the prices.

And I wished that we would do something like that here...

Of course, that wasn't income tax, but sales. Still, the idea applies...

Recommended.

[enki23]

4. because the empirical evidence is overwhelming that without equivalent transfers...

We would be joining third world in a generation or two. Capitalism trickles up. That's how the system is fucking *supposed* to work. Owners of things get to charge rent, and with that rent can buy up a greater percentage of the available things. The vast, vast majority of those who can sell nothing but their labor will never go beyond that. They don't get to charge rent. They don't own anything but their own time, and for the vanishingly fortunate few, some rapidly depreciating expertise. Most all of that is already obligated to their masters, with the usual caveat that they are ostensibly free to find a new master, if they're lucky, each iteration of which will now have an excuse to pay them less for their efforts. That's capitalism. All else is fucking commentary.

[azul]

12. Well said.

"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
-John Maynard Keynes

[Sarah Ibarruri]

5. Exactly! Those who get the most benefit, need to return that favor nt

[Ragnarok]

6. I always liked...

...some fo the stuff I saw on fairtax.org which basically goes for a flat tax on everything - no exceptions. No income tax dodging tricks and no investment protections. You buy something, you pay the tax, and a pretty big one. For sure, not all of it is good, but some points make some sense like a simplified tax code, no write offs, no depreciating values, the prebate for low income, etc... Yeah, I know start flaming away, but I like to look at lots of opinions and take some - leave the rest.

[trotsky]

8. Huge, HUGE problems.

Here are just two:

1) A large, flat consumption tax would KILL the economy. "A pretty big one"? To heck with buying a car for most people. To heck with buying decent food for many.
2) The rich spend a vanishingly small portion of their income on purchases. This "flat tax" ends up being an effective rate of <.5% for the rich, and >35% for the rest of us. Oh yeah, flat as an ironing board. :eyes:

[The Magistrate]

11. Exactly, Sir

[BOHICA12]

15. Since we are a consumption based economy ...

our tax system needs to be as well.

1. If every person/family is refunded monthly the projected tax burden of a person/family at the poverty level, then those at the poverty level would pay no taxes.
2. The federal hidden taxes in items would disappear - remember companies don't pay taxes they collect them from their customers.
3. Second-hand items would be exempt, so your behavior would determine your tax burden. Talk about a recycling community!

It not perfect, but it does take the power for rewarding friends and influencing behavior out of the tax code - and would eliminate the need for most of Congress's work.

[The Magistrate]

16. Pure Swill, Sir

At present, people in poverty, and well above the poverty level, pay no federal income taxes. They do, however, when employed, pay payroll taxes, sales taxes, and other regressive levies at federal and local levels. So your purported 'fix' to this national sales tax does not improve matters. By structuring it as a refund, whether monthly or quarterly or annually, you require payment first, which will tend to reduce consumption, and raise the immediate cost of necessities for the less well-off. The end result will be that people who are at the poorer end will have less spending power.

Federal 'hidden taxes' barely exist; the effective federal tax on corporate profits runs at less than fifteen percent, with many business paying nothing, or even receiving payment from the government in accordance with various refundable credits. Note the tax is on business profits, before you run off on the assumption one sixth of prices reflect taxes: business profits run on average between five percent and fifteen percent, so you are speaking of between one and two percent of gross receipts reflecting collection of taxes from consumers. The chief increase in 'prices' owing to federal taxes are the openly stated excise taxes, and the payroll tax, which is a wholly regressive levy, and designedly so. These things, in effect existing consumption taxes levied against the wages of working people, are not addressed by your proposal.

Touting as an advantage that purchase of second-hand goods would be exempt is risible, but does open a window into one of the real motivations behind these 'consumption tax' proposals, which is a feeling that the poorer and less well off spend too much on themselves, try and have more than they deserve, and to live more like their betters. In earlier times, these feelings issued openly in sumptuary laws, which forbid people whose income was below certain levels from purchasing certain items, or wearing certain articles of clothing. It is odd how people who continually chant, when it comes to investment and business activity, that to tax something is to reduce its supply or frequency, turn around and deny that taxing consumption would reduce the amount of consumption in society.

The great favoritism in the tax codes, before which all others pale, is the taxing of income from appreciation of capital assets at a much lesser rate than the rates at which taxes are levied on wage income, and the exemption of the sale of financial instruments from any sales or excise tax at all.

[WCGreen]

17. Great explanation in detail....

[BOHICA12]

19. Hidden taxes are not always taxes .....

A great proportion of most companies expenses is payroll ... and employers have to collect both sides of federal payroll taxes as well income tax obligations for individuals and pay for the systems to keep it all in order. That would gone. We're pretty good about collecting sales taxes - most states have very adequate systems.

Prefund if you like - at the first of each month - every person/family unit would get an EFT equivalent to the amount the DOL projects a family at the poverty level would expend. So Bill Gates gets his EFT and Joe Snuffy gets his ......

The Book, The Fair Tax, is worth reading, even if you don't like the system.

[The Magistrate]

21. And This Here Tortoise Is an Insect, Sir....

Even were one to take this desperate wheeze at face value, all you do is shift costs of collection over onto retail outlets, and providers of services, who must collect at point of sale the tax, segregate it, keep records of it, and pay it over. As a point of practical fact, most already have to do this for local taxes, and so you are imposing yet another burden on top of an existing one. You are also opening serious possibilities of fraud and evasion that would require serious policing; there is good deal of fraud and cheating that goes on with the collection of local sales taxes, and the same would occur with a federal level. One of the most charming bits of nonesense people trot out about this sort of thing is that it would abolish the Internal Revenue Service; in fact, it would open the books of every retail enterprise in the country to inspection and auditing of its books on a daily basis by a veritable army of sworn enforcement officers, and necessarily so, unless tremendous sums were to be simply forgone through tolerated theft.

You are talking nonesense, and nonesense whose sole purpose is to reduce even further the proportion of taxes paid by the wealthiest levels of society.

[Ragnarok]

26. They already collect...

...so they may as well keep collecting. Kick the rest upstairs once the money is paid out to cover benefits to the people in the State. The benefits,roads, bridges,schools, etc all reside within State borders anyhow. There are less sales tax collection points than people and thus less entities to police = less enforcement burden. There is already fraud, there would be here too. But, there are less hand offs of the money to inspect for fraud.

[The Magistrate]

27. Nonesense, Sir

There is no difference between withholding by the employer and sequestration by the merchant, in terms of 'hand offs'. The opportunities and means for a merchant to gain profit by distorting how a cash flow is accounted for are far more numerous, and more readily effected, than the opportunities for peculation available to the typical wage-earner. A person who receives and cashes a paycheck has no opportunity to fail to record a sale for cash, or enter an amount received that is less than the true figure. Nor does the person receiving and cashing a paycheck have much temptation to such shenanigans put daily before his or her hands, as the merchant does.

The rest of your spiel here is difficult to decipher. You seem to imagine taxes are collected as a lump sum, and local monies spent, then what remains is passed on to higher organs of government. This is so contrary to fact it is hard to see how conversation can proceed: it is like dealing with someone who, when asked 'What is the sum of three times four?' replies firmly 'Thursday!'

[WCGreen]

22. Just a point....

As an accountant, I have seen that the percentage of total expenditures toward payroll has slipped to down around 20%.

The amount going to net profit is at about 10-15%.

Guess where the cost cutting has taken place...

[trotsky]

23. I had intended to reply, but now there is no need.

Mine would have been lacking in comparison! Many thanks, sir!

[Ragnarok]

18. Good stuff.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

20. No, read post #16. THAT is good stuff.

[WCGreen]

13. The thing about a flat tax is that those at the top have much more

to lose if the country breaks down.

Exponentially!

The more you have at stake the more you should pay.

[rucky]

25. 15% of a minimum wage earner's income...

is a hell of a lot more than 15% of a millionaire's income, after you figure the minimum cost that's needed to cover the basics.

[azul]

9. The money needs to circulate, it is the wealth of the nation and its people

and should be spent. In the current economic model, money accumulates mainly in the most wealthy, and they tend to hoard it or lend it out speculatively.

We, the people who actually spend and circulate the money, have the choice in a democratic capitalistic system to borrow the money from the wealthy, or to tax the wealthy and have the government circulate it in various ways. One way leads to more debt and privatization, and the other to more social assets and freedom.

Natural progression tax.

[jimmyflint]

10. The only reason the tax code is 80,000 + pages are loopholes

Every rich fuck and their rich fuck lawyers and lobbyists get their favorite exemption inserted. We don't even need to raise taxes if we just remove all the loopholes.

[rucky]

24. Yep. It keeps the door open for others to benefit, as well.

And that's what scares republicans so much: That people - given equal opportunity - may succeed on their own merits.