What is a fair tax rate?

[Saigon]

What the fuck is a "balanced" economy? I never saw that term in any economics textbook.

You pump out more bullshit than any libturd in this forum.

A you are obviously aware - the only countries to try flat rate taxes are those transitioning from communism to capitalism. Many of these stat began life with no currency, no economic policy and no banks.

Hence, 'Balanced ecnoomy' in this sense means an economy which is not in transition.


I am aware that you frequently do not understand what I post.

 

[Obamanation]

We already have nearly 50% of Americans paying ZERO tax now!!!!

Raising taxes to 10% would be a heck of an improvement --- right you tax and spenders?

 

[Shelzin]

Edit: In fact it's the majority of the US history. 0% is enough to run the government with just a sales tax... We just won't have a military.

Or roads, or sewerage, or street lights, or schools, or libraries, or prisons or customs officers or immigration officials at your borders.

Didn't have those things before income tax was introduced?

Edit: Here buddy... An idea of just how little the government spends on those things you mention.

http://www.wheredidmytaxdollarsgo.com

And please note... That military for many many years was on par with income taxes. That was like one of the few things economists could agree on was the military budget. Get into a couple wars... It goes up... *shrugs*

 

[Shelzin]

We already have nearly 50% of Americans paying ZERO tax now!!!!

Raising taxes to 10% would be a heck of an improvement --- right you tax and spenders?

Actually... No... You would still have to have a base line of people you couldn't tax via income. I mean you couldn't give an income tax to someone considered in poverty. That just wouldn't make sense.

 

[Obamanation]

We already have nearly 50% of Americans paying ZERO tax now!!!!

Raising taxes to 10% would be a heck of an improvement --- right you tax and spenders?

Actually... No... You would still have to have a base line of people you couldn't tax via income. I mean you couldn't give an income tax to someone considered in poverty. That just wouldn't make sense.

Don't they tax social security?

 

[Obamanation]

I know they tax unemployment checks.

 

[Saigon]

We already have nearly 50% of Americans paying ZERO tax now!!!!

That is absolute nonsense.

Seriously - there is absolutely no excuse for you to not know something which has been blazed across the headlines of newspapers every day this week.

Can you not read at all?

 

[Shelzin]

We already have nearly 50% of Americans paying ZERO tax now!!!!

Raising taxes to 10% would be a heck of an improvement --- right you tax and spenders?

Actually... No... You would still have to have a base line of people you couldn't tax via income. I mean you couldn't give an income tax to someone considered in poverty. That just wouldn't make sense.

Don't they tax social security?

I know they tax unemployment checks.

I know... And it's fucking retarded to tax either.

Edit:

But that's a tax on something paid for by taxes. You aren't gaining anything. So it's not really taxing them, it's more like giving them less on their taxes paid.

 

[Obamanation]

We already have nearly 50% of Americans paying ZERO tax now!!!!

That is absolute nonsense.

Seriously - there is absolutely no excuse for you to not know something which has been blazed across the headlines of newspapers every day this week.

Can you not read at all?

No that is an absolute FACT!!!!

 

[Saigon]

Obamanation -

In fact, only about 8% of Americans pay neither federal income tax nor payroll tax, because they are unemployed, are students, or are disabled.

Americans are not moochers - CNN.com

 

[Cammmpbell]

OK, we'd all like to pay 0%, but what tax rates do you think would be fair - and sustainable?

For simplicity, I've broken it down here into these main categories:

Low income 20%
Middle income 27.5%
High income 35%

Corporate tax 30%

VAT 15%

Tax on dividends & shares 25%

Any other major tax categories needed?

My plan is to raise income for the state with a VAT, which will hit the shadow economy and mean even drug dealers are paying some tax.

With that extra income I can then trim corporate taxes.

Feel free to add more details in - I did this very quickly!

A fair tax schedule is one that does not burden the national economy unfairly or without solid justifrication for it in the first place.

There are no hard and fast numbers, the rate truly depends on the state of the nation at the time.

Do remember that even the highest rates are NOT placed on every dollar, but only those dollars that are in the next hihger rate of taxation.

EVeryone actually pays the EXACT same rates of taxes, but everyone's incomes' do not all get taxed at EVERY rate of taxation that the schedule has because everyone does not make enough money for THOSE ADDIONAL DOLLARS to be taxed.

The facts are that whatever is published for tax rates is a joke. When a bastard can inheirit money, invest it in equities or municipal bonds and end up paying 14% on $14 million of earnings when my wife and I pay 16% on about $80,000 is some kind of weird scam. Add to that our local and state taxes which would be a pittance for a rich person and we...WE are the ones paying the bills.

 

[Saigon]

The facts are that whatever is published for tax rates is a joke. When a bastard can inheirit money, invest it in equities or municipal bonds and end up paying 14% on $14 million of earnings when my wife and I pay 16% on about $80,000 is some kind of weird scam. Add to that our local and state taxes which would be a pittance for a rich person and we...WE are the ones paying the bills.

I totally agree - and I did almost include Inheritance Taxes here, but they are necessarily quite complex.

I do think lower income families should pay a very low inheritance tax so that they do not need to sell a home in order to inherit it, but an inheritance of $1 million or more should attract a reasonable (but not punitive) tax cut.

 

[Toro]

Flat tax across the board...

It's a nice idea...but it doen't actually work in practice. At least, not in a balanceed economy.

It has been popular in the post-Soviet economies, because they lack a middle class and the flat tax serves the interests of the all-powerful aristocracy, but it would be disastrous in any western country.

Why?

 

[Cammmpbell]

The facts are that whatever is published for tax rates is a joke. When a bastard can inheirit money, invest it in equities or municipal bonds and end up paying 14% on $14 million of earnings when my wife and I pay 16% on about $80,000 is some kind of weird scam. Add to that our local and state taxes which would be a pittance for a rich person and we...WE are the ones paying the bills.

I totally agree - and I did almost include Inheritance Taxes here, but they are necessarily quite complex.

I do think lower income families should pay a very low inheritance tax so that they do not need to sell a home in order to inherit it, but an inheritance of $1 million or more should attract a reasonable (but not punitive) tax cut.

Inheiritance!! LMAO!!

Most Americans die and leave debts. You sound like Romney and his high fallutin' wife.

Ann said they lived in a basement and ate off an ironing board. ROTFLMAO!!

 

[Saigon]

Inheiritance!! LMAO!!

Most Americans die and leave debts. You sound like Romney and his high fallutin' wife.

According to a study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, only 1.6% of Americans receive $100,000 or more in inheritance. Another 1.1% receive $50,000 to $100,000. On the other hand, 91.9% receive nothing (Kotlikoff & Gokhale, 2000). Thus, the attempt by ultra-conservatives to eliminate inheritance taxes -- which they always call "death taxes" for P.R. reasons -- would take a huge bite out of government revenues (an estimated $253 billion between 2012 and 2022) for the benefit of the heirs of the mere 0.6% of Americans whose death would lead to the payment of any estate taxes whatsoever (Citizens for Tax Justice, 2010b).

Who Rules America: Wealth, Income, and Power

I'd say US$25 billion per year in taxes is considerable.

 

[Saigon]

Flat tax across the board...

It's a nice idea...but it doen't actually work in practice. At least, not in a balanceed economy.

It has been popular in the post-Soviet economies, because they lack a middle class and the flat tax serves the interests of the all-powerful aristocracy, but it would be disastrous in any western country.

Why?

Because the nature of all progressive tax systems is that the wealthier pay a slightly higher percentage of their income - which translates into a very significant amount per capita in actual dollars.

Thus flattening the tax base will actually mean the tax of the average income bracket needs to rise.

It works in transitioning economies only because the people at the bottom have lived in such astonishing poverty that they drag the average income down.

For the US government to function as it does now, a flat tax rate might average out at around 30%, I suspect.

That alone would tip another million Americans into poverty.

 

[WillowTree]

OK, we'd all like to pay 0%, but what tax rates do you think would be fair - and sustainable?

For simplicity, I've broken it down here into these main categories:

Low income 20%
Middle income 27.5%
High income 35%

Corporate tax 30%

VAT 15%

Tax on dividends & shares 25%

Any other major tax categories needed?

My plan is to raise income for the state with a VAT, which will hit the shadow economy and mean even drug dealers are paying some tax.

With that extra income I can then trim corporate taxes.

Feel free to add more details in - I did this very quickly!

You said fair didn't you? Fair means everyone pays taxes and at the same rate. No exceptions, No exemptions, No excuses.

 

[Toro]

Who cares???

10% is plenty of money to run the gov't and protect the people... Everything else is just poorly spent money. What does the gov't do better than the private sector?

Unfortunately no country in the world has ever been foolih enough to try the idea, and I think most of us undertand why not.

The US would be bankrupt within a month.

For most of it's history, the United States took about 10% in taxes. It was only around WWI when this began to change.

I'll use round numbers here so these are not exact. Spending is 32%-40% of the US economy, depending where we are in the cycle. On average, it is around 35%, maybe a little lower. For math's sake, we'll use 34%. Federal spending is 18-24%. We'll say 20%. Roughly half of federal spending is social security, medicare and medicaid and welfare. We'll say 10%. The rest is state and local spending. We'll say 14%. At the state and local level, education accounts for 40% of all spending. For simplicity, we'll say 6%. Local welfare programs are a couple of points. So if we privatize social security and education, and end medicare, medicaid and welfare, we've cut spending in half to ~17%. Lop off a point or two on defense, since we don't need to be in 140 countries around the world and have bases in 30-40 states and we're down to 15%. There are several departments that could be shut at the federal level, which tacks on 1%-2% in savings, and we can cut some fat at the state and local level, and suddenly, we're at the 12%-13% level.

Now, you can make the argument that we should have a social safety net, redistribution of wealth, and so on, but that's a political argument, not one about whether it "cannot work." It worked for most of this country's history. You may not want to go back to that, but that's another issue.

 

[WillowTree]

We already have nearly 50% of Americans paying ZERO tax now!!!!

That is absolute nonsense.

Seriously - there is absolutely no excuse for you to not know something which has been blazed across the headlines of newspapers every day this week.

Can you not read at all?

No that is an absolute FACT!!!!

It is but you must spell it out so they cannot dance and parse.. 50% of Americans pay ZERO FEDERAL INCOME TAX. we have to carry these leeches around on our backs.

 

[Toro]

It's a nice idea...but it doen't actually work in practice. At least, not in a balanceed economy.

It has been popular in the post-Soviet economies, because they lack a middle class and the flat tax serves the interests of the all-powerful aristocracy, but it would be disastrous in any western country.

Why?

Because the nature of all progressive tax systems is that the wealthier pay a slightly higher percentage of their income - which translates into a very significant amount per capita in actual dollars.

Thus flattening the tax base will actually mean the tax of the average income bracket needs to rise.

It works in transitioning economies only because the people at the bottom have lived in such astonishing poverty that they drag the average income down.

For the US government to function as it does now, a flat tax rate might average out at around 30%, I suspect.

That alone would tip another million Americans into poverty.

You get around that by exempting the first portion of income. So for the first $X, you pay no income tax. I don't know what that would be, $20,000, $25,000? I don't know. But it's some amount. Thereafter, everyone pays the same rate on all income. Let's say the exemption is $25,000 and the rate is 20%. Somebody making $25,000 would pay $0. Somebody making $40,000 would pay $3,000 or 7.5%. Somebody making $100,000 would pay $15,000 or 15%, and so on. It's still progressive but becomes far more simple.

BTW an across-the-board VAT is far more regressive than an across-the-board flat tax.