My solution to the broken American tax system

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Here's simplicity. Individuals pay an additional 1% tax on every $20K they make up to 50% @ $1M+. Everybody pays, all income covered, no deductions, no credits. Corporations pay 1% tax on every $200K they make up to 25% @ $5M+. Everybody pays, all income covered, deductions/credits to spur certain technological innovations remain (I feel it's necessary to advance big picture stuff and limit externalities).

 

[DCal430]

I posted this solution before:

The tax system in the US is broken. How would you fix it? This is my idea.


1. 25% Business Net Receipt Tax on all goods and services (including food)
2. 25% Business paid Tax on all individual employee pay and compensation between 1 million and 10 million. (includes base salary, stock options, gifts, etcetera)
3. 50% Business paid Tax on all individual employee pay and compensation over 10 million in a given year. (includes base salary, stock options, gifts, etcetera)
4. 10% payroll/self employment tax on earned income between 30,000 to 59,999 a year
5. 20% payroll/self employment tax on earned income between 60,000 to 99,999 a year
6. 35% payroll/self employment tax on earned income between 100,000 to 500,000 a year
7. 50% payroll/self employment tax on earned income over 500,000
8. 25% tax on all other income between 0 and 1 million. (Stock earning, dividends, capital gains, etcetera)
9. 50% tax on all other income over 1 million (Stock earning, dividends, capital gains, etcetera)
10. $250 a month rebate for each person, including children.
11. All tax revenue above will be divided 25% to the state and 75% to the federal government

All tax revenue below will be for federdal government only.
1. 25% estate tax for 1st 500k
2. 50% estate tax for 2nd 500k
3. 75% estate tax for over 1M.

All tax revenue below will be for states only

1. 1.5% property tax, with a 5% max increase in assessed value a year for a single primary place of residence.


THERE SHALL BE 0 DEDUCTIONS ON PAYROLL TAXES.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Good luck on your Utopian tax system DCal430.

 

[DCal430]

Good luck on your Utopian tax system DCal430.

This tax system is designed to limit the number of people who make excess amounts of income, and who hoard wealth. If you die while hording a billion dollars, don't expect to be able to keep most of it. You are lucky the government lets your family keep any of it.

 

[DCal430]

Truth be told, the absolute most ideal tax system. Is one in which everything is taxed at 100%. Where the government collects all things produced, and distributes everything to people as they need it. There will be no rich, no poor. There will be no greedy. There will be everyone working for each other.

 

[Zebo]

I'd just go back to a system that worked before but I'm lazy that way (copying what works) Like Eisenhower's days who paid off massive war debt and built us into largest creditor in the world.

 

[matt0611]

Truth be told, the absolute most ideal tax system. Is one in which everything is taxed at 100%. Where the government collects all things produced, and distributes everything to people as they need it. There will be no rich, no poor. There will be no greedy. There will be everyone working for each other.

I'm telling you, you should move to Cuba. No, really, you should. They believe the same thing you do, its a paradise there I heard. Everyone has a right to a house, medical care, food, etc

Everyone is so happy and everything is provided for them. Its great.

 

[Zebo]

Truth be told, the absolute most ideal tax system. Is one in which everything is taxed at 100%. Where the government collects all things produced, and distributes everything to people as they need it. There will be no rich, no poor. There will be no greedy. There will be everyone working for each other.

Yeah right commard. I chose not to work. Please fill up my free boat and put a 12 pack in the ice chest I'm going fishin. What you gonna do about it? Been tried they had to send people to gulag to make uncoorperative members comply and everyone else did just enough to get by.

The ideal tax system is one that offers a balanced budget, gives incentive to work, and offers bottom up prosperity.

 

[DCal430]

Yeah right commard. I chose not to work. Please fill up my boat and put a 12 pack in the ice chest I'm going fishin. What you gonna do about it? Been tried they had to send people to gulag to make uncoorperative members comply and everyone else did just enough to get by.

The ideal tax system is one that offers a balanced budget, gives incentive to work, and offers bottom up prosperity.

Those who are able body, but choose not to work, can be reeducated to understand why they should work for the greater good of society. If reeducation fails, force labor camps become an option.

 

[Throckmorton]

You know this is how tax brackets already work right?

 

[RightIsWrong]

You know this is how tax brackets already work right?

In theory, they are supposed to work like this. In reality, there are so many deductions and breaks and credits that the system hardly resembles anything like that. My proposal is to eliminate all of that and to go with a straight progressive flat tax which is nothing like the current structure.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

I don't get how this is supposed to work. Who is going to propose this new tax bill, exactly? Who is going to vote for it to see it through to legislation? And more importantly, who is going to stop America's famous special interest groups, lobbyists, and filthy rich from getting their fat grubby hands on it and mutilating it into something that they could once again manipulate?

 

[SparkyJJO]

The problem I'm trying to solve is taxing someone making $250K at the same rate as someone making $25M. I'm not trying to tax the "shit" out of anyone, I'm just trying fix an obviously broken scale. Tax income brackets need to reflect the actual income scale to approach any sort of fairness. But that's the last thing folks like you seem to want.

Tell me again why the RATE is the problem? Why is the same RATE the issue, since the guy making 25M at the same rate will pay 100x MORE in taxes than
the guy making 250K, when both are at the same rate. And don't start that "marginal utility" crap again.


Seems to me that some people want the following scenario, but they don't dare come out and say it directly:
Person A makes $50k. Person B makes $150k. To be "fair" tax them at different rates so after taxes person A and person B both have $40k left. That makes it "fair" right?

OK so maybe I'm jumping off the deep end here, and I sure hope that not all you graduated income tax proponents feel that way, but some people sure seem to.

 

[davmat787]

For any of these theoretical proposals, it would seem you would need to apply it to say last year or two, to see how realistic the results would be. No reform will happen if the result is an immediate 50% cut to tax revenue. However, it would be damn near impossible to do this I imagine.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Marginal utility/value isn't crap, and if you don't understand that you don't understand economics.

 

[SparkyJJO]

Marginal utility/value isn't crap, and if you don't understand that you don't understand economics.

The concept of marginal utility is not crap, you're right, but the way people want to apply it and use it to justify increased taxes is crap.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

The way wealth accumulates exponentially the higher up the income scale you go is crap too, but that's how our world works, and there's noting unfair to have a tax system that does the same.

 

[Generator]

IRS offices? Is this a real problem? If I had to take a guess the IRS is probably the most effective government bulldog we have. Regardless of your petty reasonings for a need of flat taxes they seem like good rates to me.

I don't know if complexity is what is the problem, it simply is that the tax code is unfair. The more you make, the less you pay. The cracker barrel class is carrying the whole country and its obviously not working. I have a feeling that true small business are being smothered by politics and corporations in such a way that Americans really have no upward mobility.

The only way to achieve these flat tax rates is to feed the beast. We must drive the country into the abyss. We have to bankrupt this country in all facets. We need 10 wars, 100 bridges to nowhere, 1,000 jets that never leave there hangars. If you really think about it, this is what Obama is exactly doing. HE IS GORGING THE BEAST! This country must implode on itself before we could have anything like the OP has put forth.

Our whole country is hanging by a few threads. The Bush cuts are a knife that serve no purpose but in only weakening that rope. The Bush taxes really only ever served the rich. Hell the wealthy is more apt, but right at this very moment Walstreet is conniving some new wicked scheme. The oil/food speculation? Thats bread and butter..thats the old hat. But look how devastating even that is! We have the Oil wars going on in the middle east. For every other poorer country they can't even afford food...

Eventually though Walstreet will blowup something else again and I don't see how we survive. Can we really add 14 trillion to the deficit to prop up this house cards like last time?!

 

[charrison]

Go ahead, join a Amazon tribe. I'm sure you'll love the simple life.

So if we dont have 50,000 pages of tax code, you are tribal? Are you really that stupid?

 

[Matt1970]

This tax system is designed to limit the number of people who make excess amounts of income, and who hoard wealth. If you die while hording a billion dollars, don't expect to be able to keep most of it. You are lucky the government lets your family keep any of it.

The next time you see a billionaire living in a one room apartment with no car you let me know. That would be hoarding money. All the ones I know of spend money on houses, cars, furniture, etc keeping the economy alive and keeping jobs alive.

Truth be told, the absolute most ideal tax system. Is one in which everything is taxed at 100%. Where the government collects all things produced, and distributes everything to people as they need it. There will be no rich, no poor. There will be no greedy. There will be everyone working for each other.

That only works on Star Trek.

 

[Matt1970]

Truth be told, the absolute most ideal tax system. Is one in which everything is taxed at 100%. Where the government collects all things produced, and distributes everything to people as they need it. There will be no rich, no poor. There will be no greedy. There will be everyone working for each other.

Oh ya, be prepared to give up the PC you are on and the house you live in because there are a LOT of less fortunate people than you.

 

[SparkyJJO]

Truth be told, the absolute most ideal tax system. Is one in which everything is taxed at 100%. Where the government collects all things produced, and distributes everything to people as they need it. There will be no rich, no poor. There will be no greedy. There will be everyone working for each other.

That's called Communism. IT DOES NOT WORK.

 

[Zebo]

Those who are able body, but choose not to work, can be reeducated to understand why they should work for the greater good of society. If reeducation fails, force labor camps become an option.

Remember show I said earlier I look at what worked? That did not work. They killed and enslaved and the "free" people lived in poverty, drab apartments and hated it. Communism is a fail majorly and Russians want no part of it today.

What did and does work is capitalism with mild social undertones so you can rise from factory floor to CEO. Practiced well in USA from about 1940 until 1980s. Still practiced in some of Europe.

Motivated people produce more than exploited people. Both totally laissez fair and communism exploit unfortunately.

 

[davmat787]

Truth be told, the absolute most ideal tax system. Is one in which everything is taxed at 100%. Where the government collects all things produced, and distributes everything to people as they need it. There will be no rich, no poor. There will be no greedy. There will be everyone working for each other.

Who decides what one gets and what another does not? The government is not some magical entity that automatically makes you smarter and better than the civilian population. Governments that operate that way tend to be dictators and communists, you might want to check out how well that has worked.

You just trolling here though, right? You didn't really mean this, amirite? A retarded, as in both the literal and generic meaning, april fools joke perhaps?

 

[lupi]

Those who are able body, but choose not to work, can be reeducated to understand why they should work for the greater good of society. If reeducation fails, force labor camps become an option.

I'm surprised craig987 hasn't proposed to you yet.