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I don't know all of the deal with taxes, but I think if everyone paid some set percetnage of their income that would make sense.. I think the more wealthy someone gets there seems to be more loopholes and other nonsense.
Flat tax...
You pay X pecent whether you make 25K a yr or 1M a yr... I don't know why we can't get some straight answers on why this wouldn't work...
Because the bottom 50% right now don't pay any taxes. Some even get back more than they paid in.
And we've already heard that it would be a hardship on them to pay taxes.
Isn't there a difference between taxing individuals vs. taxing corporations? How would taxing an individual make a corporation increase the prices of its products?
Well there is the rub isn't it. Ask the Walton's, the richest family in the country. Taxing them has absolutely no effect on how Walmart charges for products. And it is not a truism, it is one of Newton's laws of physics. The cause and effect would be if you tax the wealthy more they would have less money. That is the cause and effect. Take Alice Walton for example. Never worked a day in her life. Has a total wealth of 20 billion. If she invests that 20 billion and gets a modest 5% return on her investment. She will make 1 billion a year from her investments. If she was taxed at 50%, substantially more than what has bee proposed, she would still make 500 million a year tax free. Wow, feel sorry for her. That is literally winning the mega birth lottery every year of your life.
I don't know all of the deal with taxes, but I think if everyone paid some set percetnage of their income that would make sense.. I think the more wealthy someone gets there seems to be more loopholes and other nonsense.
Flat tax...
You pay X pecent whether you make 25K a yr or 1M a yr... I don't know why we can't get some straight answers on why this wouldn't work...
For example: 20% taxes on $20,000/year is much more significant than 20% on $200,000/year.
Have you heard that old truism, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction? Do you not think that if people in high finance and industry, etc. experience increased costs, they will just pass it on the consumers of there product as a price increase? Thus, it is the little guy, the alleged 99 percent person who will get hurt in the end. Now will one of you brilliant liberals tell me where I am making a mistake in my thinking?
Our tax code is decent for all classes, the problem is wait for it...loopholes!
The wealthy are supposed to be paying 35% I believe but that's almost never what they actually pay, so we could either do this, increase their tax rate to 40% so they could stop paying 15% in taxes up to 20, or we could close the loopholes and make them pay their actual rate of 35%, your choice. (Not really)
Our tax code is decent for all classes, the problem is wait for it...loopholes!
The wealthy are supposed to be paying 35% I believe but that's almost never what they actually pay, so we could either do this, increase their tax rate to 40% so they could stop paying 15% in taxes up to 20, or we could close the loopholes and make them pay their actual rate of 35%, your choice. (Not really)
Try the 28% and 33% brackets. $250K is wealthy, $200K for singles.
Have you heard that old truism, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction? Do you not think that if people in high finance and industry, etc. experience increased costs, they will just pass it on the consumers of there product as a price increase? Thus, it is the little guy, the alleged 99 percent person who will get hurt in the end. Now will one of you brilliant liberals tell me where I am making a mistake in my thinking?
It's called a balanced approach to get the debt reduced: Cuts and revenue.
Someone is going to pay more taxes, or would you rather have cuts to defense?
Republicans only want cuts on entitlement programs that help the poor and middle class...
Because the bottom 50% right now don't pay any taxes. Some even get back more than they paid in.
And we've already heard that it would be a hardship on them to pay taxes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by emcee squared
For example: 20% taxes on $20,000/year is much more significant than 20% on $200,000/year.
The wealthy should pay more taxes. If a person makes 10 times as much as someone else, they should pay 10 times the taxes....
The problem with our tax system isn't that the rich need to pay more. It's that the bottom 50% pay nothing in federal taxes.
I do agree with your logic though. Regan taught us that trickle down economics works (his policies ushered in the longest boom time we've ever seen). When people who have money spend money demand for goods goes up. When demand for goods go up, jobs are created. When jobs are created, the people who get those jobs pay taxes and have money to spend. When they spend their money, demand for goes goes up....and so on and so on and so on. Too bad obama didn't have the sense to use the debt he racked up to do some trickle down.....a one time stimulus lasts as long as it takes to cash the check. You have to think long term to deal with an economy like this. We need Regan back.
You're describing supply-and-demand, which is not "trickle-down-economics."
By the way, that phrase is a derogatory term for Reagan policies.
Trickle-down-economics is what got us here in the first-place: wide sweeping cuts and breaks for the wealthy and corporations ("supply-side" economic policy) which is theoretically supposed to "trickle down" to the underclass. Except that never happens, because all you do is make the rich, richer, and the poor, poorer, as the revenue that gets lost from taxing the top income levels has to be made up by the bottom income levels.
When you don't make up that revenue, you get deficit spending and increased debt.
The top levels of income do not provide a means of demand. When you have supply-side problems, you use supply-side economic solutions, like those kinds of tax breaks, to solve them.
But the United States does not have a supply-side problem. Businesses are flush with cash--they're not hiring as much (if at all) because they have no demand. No company will ever hire an employee just because they have more money. That is truly voo-doo economics.
No, a company will hire an employee when their ability to supply is outstripped by the demand for their product or service. If you want to increase demand with policy, you apply demand-side solutions. Lower-taxes on the middle-class and lower-class, social programs and redistribution (food-stamps are one of the most effective stimulus programs we have), and Keynesian monetary policy.
Every-time I hear a republican suggest that the wealthy are paying too much in taxes, I laugh--they already have all your money, what more are they going to do by taking more of it? I wasn't aware two trillion dollars wasn't enough to create a job or two.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chowhound
I don't know all of the deal with taxes, but I think if everyone paid some set percetnage of their income that would make sense.. I think the more wealthy someone gets there seems to be more loopholes and other nonsense.
Flat tax...
You pay X pecent whether you make 25K a yr or 1M a yr... I don't know why we can't get some straight answers on why this wouldn't work...
Flat-taxes don't work because they're inherently regressive. They affect low-income earners more than high-income earners, disproportionally. The reason is the value of the dollar is more for someone making less than it is for someone making more. The costs of people are relatively similar--costs don't scale between income earners as much as income does. While I might spend 50% of my income in rent, someone making twice as much as me is only going to be spending 25% of their income in rent. Someone making ten times as much as me would be spending maybe 10% of their income in rent. So on and so forth.
When you start mixing in credits and deductions, you end up with decreasing effective tax rates for flat-taxes--it's one of the reasons we have a progressive tax structure to begin with. You'd have even worse inequality than we do now on a regressive flat-tax system.
Fair Tax attempts to remedy this with probates, but it is inherently a flat-tax system, and as a result, inherently regressive.
You can read more on Wikipedia which might be able to explain that better, my examples aren't always perfect.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyTexan
Because the bottom 50% right now don't pay any taxes.
This is a ****ing lie and you know it.
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