DarrylS

Regressive tax or not, the problem with income taxes is that it favors the wealthy.. there are whole professions who make a living off of finding loopholes to avoid paying taxes...

Have worked for people, when we had the cleaning business, who would refer to their enclave on the water as their income tax deduction..

Never mind the huge federal bureaucracy to enforce the regulations.. it could be done simpler and more efficiently.

The challenge for many is avoidance, while many in the middle and lower just pay begrudgingly..

__________________
"Being the best doesn't mean you always win. It just means you win more than anyone else".. tweet from Kurt Warner to Tom Brady.

PatsFanInVa

Yeah but look at the numbers above... sales taxes work that way. Same would be true of a flat tax.

You're looking at a system that ends up with RMoney paying an effective rate of 13% in a good year. I have no doubt he had years where he paid 10% or 5%... but he didn't pay .1% (Except maybe 2009, a likely zero liability year for RMoney.)

Think about it for a minute -- that's what "regressive" or "progressive" means in a tax system.

Saying "I hate the present system because with income tax the wealthy get away with murder" is all well and good, but by extension of the metaphor, the wealthy will get away with mass murder in the flat tax/national sales tax alternative.

Just calculate the tax burden of an extremely high earner using the sales tax or flat tax, versus using the present system, to confirm this for yourself.

The solution they use to make the math work for these things itself should tip you off: "We have to broaden the base." Well let's see. They're not going to broaden it to other wealthy people, by and large. Who's that leave?

PFnV

DarrylS

Not having the economic background, will leave this discussion for those who have a better handle than I..

There are other forays that I am better versed in.. au revoir.

__________________
"Being the best doesn't mean you always win. It just means you win more than anyone else".. tweet from Kurt Warner to Tom Brady.

PatsFanInVa

You're still taking X% more from a firefighter who is breaking bones, stressing out, bleeding, burning, asphyxiating, and otherwise having an unpleasant go of it whenever he goes to the store or out to dinner. And, you're taking more of it because the math gives the edge to the plutocrat who makes his money by watching his money make money.

Because of how much gets taken from the different income layers, until we have million-dollar-a-year firefighters, the firefighter will always get screwed in a national sales tax scenario compared with a plutocrat.

What you're pointing toward is that a waitress, a roofer, a firefighter, a regular middle class person... has more burden than he or she should. That's the obscene part.

You don't cure that obscenity by making it worse.

The visceral reaction specifically to income tax, versus some other kind of tax that would be better for the very rich and worse for the people you mention, just doesn't hold water... it's a giveaway from those very hardworking people you just mentioned to the people who don't work.

I agree with your gut reaction point: Regular people need a break.

But I disagree that we should do things that cosmetically look like they give regular people a break when they just make things worse.

But one other point I guess of agreement... OT, tax policy aside... if we could stop just for ten seconds from simply being buttholes to each other, at least people could go about their lives feeling like they have to fight less to maintain basic dignity.

We all know the righties that are still trying to make hay from a very real phenomenon in the 60s or 70s.

People came home from war, and got blamed for the policies that sent them to war. The U.S. Army set up free-fire zones. Then you pulled the trigger. Then the person you freely fired on turned out to be a 6-year old -- or, you didn't, but somebody did.

Then you come home to derision for serving your country.

Well, that was wrong. It's not happening anymore. It's common for people of every political persuasion to tell people coming home "thank you." No matter if you agree with the war, we're all aware you have to value the vet. They do what they do for all of us, whether you disagree with present policy or not.

Why can't we think that way about everyday people who break their bodies to make cars, get dinner out to the fourtop at table 3, put out the fires, do the EMT work for people who are hurt, do whatever they do to keep our lives running "as we assume they should"?

I don't mean never complain if service is bad, I just mean assume that people who do things for you are serving you, just as you serve them when you do what you do?

Random thought. Seems like we feel like we're all trying to grind down whoever we get a chance to. It might have the equivalent value of a sizable raise, in terms of wellbeing, if people were just not habitual buttholes to each other.

/rant

PFnV

PatriotsReign

I look at all tax increases as DECREASES in my income.

I'd assume most look at it the same way.

PatsFanInVa

Okay let's never pay off the debt! Ta-daaaa!

PatriotsReign

It's like magic!

So you agree that all tax increases are also decreases in income. In addition, they are decreases in discretionary/disposable income.

So people will save less, buy less or both.

PatsFanInVa

In the same sense that every tax reduction is a giveaway, yes -- and in the same sense that publicly financed income enhancement being discontinued is not a "tax increase." For example, if you give people "temporary" money every year starting in 2003, it's not "raising their taxes" to allow the sunset provision to kick in.

However, the state of our economy at present argues strongly that middle class tax cuts should be allowed to continue. If we, as a nation, can afford it, I would not be against those rates being permanent.

For the rich? There's no reason they ever got the cut in the first place. Stop the giveaways.

PFnV

RI Patriots fan

Stop giving them their own money back.....causes its the people's money!

PatriotsReign

PFiVA....serious point here, ok?

Have you ever considered WHY our gov't has been cutting taxes for the past 15-20 years? I know you're wicked smaht, so I assume you realize it was all to generate economic growth.

Why?

Gotta tip my hat to Titus Pullo here and say that it was because our politicians (and "them" and "they") knew growth was in decline. It was all one big bubble after another. Think about all the tax cuts, gov't subisidies and changes in laws that fed that beast!

And the biggest of them all....the king of all of them was the "making homes affordable" to everyone scheme.

And I do believe they knew exactly what "they" were doing every step of the way. And then the house of cards fell all at once....and here we are all "feh'd up".

Which is exactly why Bernanke's QE bullsheeit upsets me to no end. Because in the end, we'll end up at the same point whether we try to prop things up ad infinitum or not. I don't believe we need to bridge our economy to the next boom cycle because I don't believe there will another boom cycle. At least not the kind we all remember.

And that brings me to the point of why I am constantly saying I want our gov't to tell us the truth....and I mean ALL of it. And yes, I can handle the truth...I believe we all can.

No more smoke & mirrors...no more bridges to no where and no more pyramid schemes that need constant influx of fiat money.

It's time to deal with reality on it's own terms.