Anything above a 50% top marginal federal income tax rate should be reserved for special situations, butI’m OK with federal income tax rates up to about 50%.
Why should the federal government pay for that? Why not the city or state?
I’m all for cutting pork but I wonder if red staters realize that they get proportionally more pork per capita than blue states.
Am I being whooshed here?
Making rich people happy make them richer, did you mean to say making the rich richer makes them happy?
And the rich getting richers means mroe revenue for the rest of us? It does for me but I’m a tax lawyer but I don’t know if thats true for everyone.
I know plenty of people who couldn’t live on $250K/year but they are used to making over $million/year. They can spare the extra 40K in taxes but if we went bak to a 1950’s tax structure, they wouldn’t be able to make ends meet without seriously altering their lifestyle.
Of course not! All red-state conservatives are self-made people! They didn’t get any benefits from an orderly society with police and fire protection, (fairly) well-maintained roads, or schooling for all citizens. They’re doing just fine with their local military bases, defense contractor factories, FEMA tornado/flood/hurricane aid, and food stamps to keep their trailer parks solvent. No need for federal interventions!
You have no idea what you are talking about do you?
Look at the tax code sometime.
The FAIR tax simply shifts tax burdens from one group to the next. It is no simpler than what we have now and even if it was a bit simpler to begin with, it would become complicated again within a couple of decades.
We undoubtedly need comprehensive tax reform but the Fair tax is about the stupidest proposal out there (which means its probably the one we will end up going with)
Because enforcement is very hard when people decide to give discounts for cash.
Bartering already has all sorts of enforcement issues. Ask any state tax adminsitrator what sort of compliance rate they get on sales tax collection.
I think the idea is that there are fewer people selling stuff than buying stuff. In the end it just shifts the tax burden from one group of people to another.
The progressivity starts flattening out pretty quickly and gets regressive once you get to the point where people can start saving significant parts of their income.
How much do you think the federal tax infrastructure costs?
They would be fine if it was the COMPLETE 1950s tax structure. All of their perqs form work would not be taxed (cars, meals, country club memberships, clothing allowance, etc.). They would have amazing shelters that they could use with little impact. Their kids would all have big funded trust accounts. That 1950s high marginal rate structure was chock-full of ways for the very rich to shield, hide, stash, move income PLUS the bennies from work that Congress started nailing in the 80s and on.
I don’t know. I just think the Fair Tax tries to make its case by promising how much simpler and cheaper things will be without the IRS, with no consideration of the complexities and costs of administering the Fair Tax itself. That strikes me as a pretty shifty debating tactic.
And there are other reasons to oppose the Fair Tax, too.
We would have a lot of unemployment if we did not give tax breaks to the wealthy. Since we have cut their taxes for more than a decade, they have created tons of jobs and expanded business. All is well.
Since cutting taxes to the rich creates jobs, where the hell are they?
There is no tax code as we know it in the fair tax proposal. Income tax is replaced with a consumption tax. No complex income tax forms to fill out. The IRS would cease as would the majority of jobs associated with it.
To be replaced by some new bureaucracy created to administer the Fair Tax.
Someone bartered for something? Gotta put a dollar amount on that so they can pay the consumption tax. Issuing prebate checks? Gotta know every household in the country and the number of people living there. Someone has a baby, a child living part time with each parent, taking care of an elderly family member? Gotta keep those stats up-to-date every month. Someone lying to increase their prebate? Gotta have inspectors and auditors to investigate that.
And that’s just with the proposal as it currently stands. The same pressures that led the income tax to become so complicated will still exist, so this tax would be tweaked over the years, too.
We already have a sales tax without a huge bureaucracy attached to it.
And the prebates?
And don’t forget that under Fair Tax, every single business in America becomes a tax collector, with all the reporting and figuring that entails.
Something Geitner gets for being handsome?
Have you actually read about the Fair Tax?