.
Ho boy, this silly, simplistic, naive notion that a bunch of professional politicians and the federal bureaucracy can legislate "fairness", too funny. Like anything else -- I know the partisans will hate this -- structuring a tax system is a matter of finding proper
equilibrium.
On one side, yes, we all benefit by many (not all) of the things that taxes create. Roads, bridges, police, yawn. I'm not aware of anyone who has ever said that they were not willing to pay for roads, bridges and police, but I know that's somehow a real big argument. So yes, we all benefit there, and we've all gotta pay for it. So I'm thrilled we have that terribly complicated issue out of the way.
On the other side, you cannot simplistically and punitively tax those who create wealth through investment and business ownership to the point where you have damaged their financial motiviation to do so. Nor can we provide services that motivate people at the bottom end to improve their
own lives.
Do I really need to point this out? Actually, I'm pretty sure I do, which is pretty goddamn freakin' amazing to me.
So then, we are left with three essential moving parts to consider: The amount of "support" we are providing the lower ends of the economic spectrum, the tax code and the marginal tax rates within that code.
I won't even bother addressing the support we're providing the lower ends of the economic spectrum, because it's clear we're becoming more and more dependent on that on a cellular, cultural level; nor would I bother thinking about simplying our hilarious tax code, because our "leaders" clearly don't have the balls to take that on to any extent. I'll let someone else sort all that shit out, I've given up.
The first thing I would do is drop the corporate tax rate to
0%. There is no freakin' way to describe the amount of domestic economic activity on multiple levels that would spur immediately, or the amount of capital that would be immediately re-patriated by our own corporations, not to mention the literal ******* FLOOD of international capital that come our way sometime, oh, next week. To be perfectly honest, I don't even know if our economic infrastructure would be able to
handle the increase in positive economic activity, but I'd freakin'
love to find out.
Guess what that would do? It would increase both the incomes of those all over our economic strata and create a few zillion new jobs. That would, by itself, create a
******* flood of new tax revenue with which our "leaders" can purchase votes.
And that leaves us with our wonderfully comedic marginal tax rates, which are just a little old.
Since there's not a ******* thing I can do about our tax system, all we could do then is fiddle with the numbers on the marginal tax rates. And, because incomes at the top end have now risen to stratospheric levels, I would add two (2) new marginal levels.
And remember, before any conservative heads explode here, these rates would be
marginal only and we would
keep all personal deductions for investing, capital gains, estate tax, etc. Plenty of ways, zillions of ways, to work with that. So maybe something like this (new rates in
bold):
- 10% on taxable income from $0 to $8,925, plus
- 15% on taxable income over $8,925 to $36,250, plus
- 25% on taxable income over $36,250 to $87,850, plus
- 28% on taxable income over $87,850 to $183,250, plus
- 33% on taxable income over $183,250 to $398,350, plus
- 35% on taxable income over $398,350 to $400,000, plus
- 39.6% on taxable income over $400,000 to $750,000, plus
[*]44.9% on taxable income over $750,000 to $1,000,000, plus
[*]49.9% on taxable income over $1,000,000
Something like that. Maybe a touch higher on the top end. Then we look at ways to deal with spending, but I've wasted enough bandwidth.
I suspect both "ends" will hate this, which is always a good sign.
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