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Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

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Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

ScoobyDoo said:
Not sure. All I know is the burden on the wealthy is greater under my plan as I'm sure that the flat tax number would be around 33% like Kepler suggested. That would make Romney pay 15% more in taxes than he normally does.
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To be fair to me (which is important), my ideal system has a top marginal rate of 99.99% on income above, say, $1B a year.
 
Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

Kepler said:
To be fair to me (which is important), my ideal system has a top marginal rate of 99.99% on income above, say, $1B a year.
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Yeah, and that makes perfect sense to me as well. What I don't like is someone telling me my system is more regressive than what those Republican ****tards on Capital Hill advocate.
 
ScoobyDoo said:
Not sure. All I know is the burden on the wealthy is greater under my plan as I'm sure that the flat tax number would be around 33% like Kepler suggested. That would make Romney pay 15% more in taxes than he normally does.
Click to expand...

He, Bill Gates, George Soros, Warren Buffett, and the evil Koch brothers will hire more accountants and lawyers to ensure that they pay less than they are currently paying.

Thw extreme well to do will always pay less percentage wise than what most of us do. That's because they have the resources to employ people to make it so. What's wrong with that?
 
Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

joecct said:
He, Bill Gates, George Soros, Warren Buffett, and the evil Koch brothers will hire more accountants and lawyers to ensure that they pay less than they are currently paying.

Thw extreme well to do will always pay less percentage wise than what most of us do. That's because they have the resources to employ people to make it so. What's wrong with that?
Click to expand...

And this is why the flat tax makes sense. There is no accounting tricks. A postcard handles your filing.
 
Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

Kepler said:
I think the point is that the current system has sheltered so much of the wealthy's income from funding government, that two things happen:

1. Revenue shortfall drives deficits.
2. As deficits eat into expenditures, government programs that benefit the poor and middle class are cut.

The rejoinder is that the wealthy pay the lion's share of the tax burden. The rebuttal to that is that they do because inequality is out of control and what's been happening is the wealthy have been paying a smaller percentage of an income so much higher that its relative share of total revenue has gone up. Basically, we're driving so many people into poverty that eventually the rich will be taxed $1 but it will be the only dollar of revenue, so they will pay "100%" of the burden.
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The biggest issue I see is that both parties are spending too much, whether it's policing the world, welfare spending, or even the cost of enforcing redundant and sometimes contradictory legislation, and that's not being addressed. Instead, they're just trying to throw more money at the problem, and going after the rich because it's an "easy out" that makes people "feel good". The problem with said socialistic view is that you will eventually run out of other people's money, and with the way spending has ballooned in the last 60 years, the end does not seem to be in sight.
 
Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

joecct said:
He, Bill Gates, George Soros, Warren Buffett, and the evil Koch brothers will hire more accountants and lawyers to ensure that they pay less than they are currently paying.
Click to expand...

No offense but this reasoning is nonsense. IF that were true, whenever the country has raised taxes (1990,1993,2013) we'd be seeing less tax revenue afterwards. That didn't happen.
 
Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

Rover said:
No offense but this reasoning is nonsense. IF that were true, whenever the country has raised taxes (1990,1993,2013) we'd be seeing less tax revenue afterwards. That didn't happen.
Click to expand...

Progressive taxation --> decreased wealth inequality --> growing middle class --> pressure for lower taxes --> regressive taxation --> increased wealth inequality --> shrinking middle class --> pressure for higher taxes --> progressive taxation --> ...

Forever.
 
Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

Rover said:
No offense but this reasoning is nonsense. IF that were true, whenever the country has raised taxes (1990,1993,2013) we'd be seeing less tax revenue afterwards. That didn't happen.
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Don't look at the next year, but within 2-3 years.
 
Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

Rover said:
Middle class wasn't taking the 1993 or 2013 tax hits. It was the top tier. Not sure about 1990.
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15 and 28 brackets existed prior to 1990. The 31 was added in 1990. 1993 added the 35 and 39.6.
 
Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

ScoobyDoo said:
You realize that 0 is less than the 15% payroll tax everyone who has a job pays, right? Or no?
Click to expand...

You realize that what you're proposing is still not a flat tax, right? And that a flat tax is by definition a regressive tax.
 
Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

joecct said:
The tax code will not solve income inequality. The 1% will employ legal means to avoid excess taxation.

You need a change in morality and perhaps some changing of 200+ years of how we do business.
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The pope is working on it.

But in the meantime, the surest way for something not to work is not to try it. Progressive taxation did ameliorate wealth inequality in the United States from the New Deal through the Great Society. We have the data -- it worked. While we wait for people to become better people, we can make economic choices that help people rather than just throw up our hands and surrender to the plutocracy.
 
Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

Kepler said:
Because this.
Click to expand...

Except that a flat tax would only exacerbate this. The other problem is that as you shift the revenue burden up the scale AND be revenue neutral, you are needing to go to marginal numbers that start to become non-starters for a lot of people, even moderates. Say you want to completely exempt everything under 25k, you'd probably need to have something that looks like:
$0 0.0%
$25,000 0.0%
$37,450 17.5%
$90,750 28.0%
$189,300 35.0%
$411,500 41.5%
$666,667 45.0%
$1,000,000 50.0%
$5,000,000 60.0%
All Over 5M 65.0%

That would (roughly) lower the effective rate for everyone under $100k and increase it for everyone over. It's pretty incredible how much is generated by that first $25,000.

If you do the $75k/33% rule, you'd have a massive, massive revenue shortfall. You'd need to go with something like a $75k/62% rule.

Furthermore, it is becoming apparent that scooby doesn't understand what a flat tax is and how it compares to what we have. Because he's proposed is just a lower effective rate version of what we have, (and what we have is a progressive system).
 
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