Iowa, I try not to be confrontational with people. But I'm tired tonight, I'm still dealing with an uncomfortable dental problem and therefore more cranky than usual, so please take that into consideration when I tell you that frankly sir, I think you're full of it.
Keep the sales taxes and such at the local level, certainly no higher than state, so that we, the tax payers, can continue to vote whether we want to pay another quarter cent tax on this or that, or the powers are required to explain the cost of fees and licenses and such when asked.
At the federal level a flat tax is the most simple, most honest, and most reasonable way to be fair to everybody. Instead of worrying so much that the rich aren't being suitably punished by the tax code, you should be worrying that almost half of Americans pay no federal income tax at all. So they have absolutely no dog in the fight and suffer no consequences when taxes are raised on everybody else, but their vote counts as much as everybody else. I can't imagine a more corrupt or unfair system than that.
If ALL have to pay a proportionate share of the taxes, ALL will have much more interest in how much those taxes are and what Congress is doing with them.
The flat tax drastically reduces the tax burden on those who can afford it and drastically raises the tax burden on those who cannot. If you're living pay check to pay check, the taxes removed from you will mean the difference between saving and borrowing. While the rich have an added benefit through lower tax rates.
The middle class is where the money should be put, not the rich. Consumer spending drives the economy, creates jobs and enhances our standard of living. Trickle down doesn't work.
But, if you actually believe that taking more money from the poor and less money from the rich is fair, I have to wonder why.
If I'm making $350,000 a year and my taxes go from a marginal rate of 35% to 15%, my lifestyle will be enhanced. If I'm making $35,000 a year and my tax rate goes from 7% to 15%, I might not be able to buy the goods and services I used to and the economy grinds to a halt. Fair? Smart? Hardly.
But if you lose most of the deductions, exemptions, and tax credits that you can access now in order to get that flat rate, you might find yourself paying about as much as you paid before. Meanwhile if you're making $350,000 a year, the chances are good that you are contributing more than the average bear in various forms of philanthropy, you are investing in your own business and hiring people or investing in other business and thereby helping them grow, you are saving money so that it is in the bank available to others to borrow, and you are consuming far more than the average bear which also has a positive effect on the economy.
Every penny you spend, save, contribute, or invest in the private sector has a positive benefit on the overall economy. Every dollar confiscated in taxes is swallowed up in the bureaucracy where most of its value will be siphoned off just to support that and it also then unavailable to have a positive impact on the overall economy.
As for the low income people getting hit, yes they would. And they should. They are citizens as much as any people are citizens and therefore need to be paying their fair share to support the country just like everybody else. I believe such a system would so benefit the economy and it would take off with such vigor, there would be far more opportunities for the 'poor' to become much richer.
We need to stop making people wards of the government and start encouraging them to see and reach for their potential. That would be the compassionate road the way I see it.
