Wth the exception of import taxes, I believe those are all state/local incomes. And in today’s world of globalization, using import taxes as a major source of income isn’t feasible.
Brian:
Your father’s federal income tax is 40% of his income? I really doubt that.
“User fees”?? What do think taxers are? You use the military, therefore you pay fees.
You’d “like to think” that it would be impressive? Well, I’d like to think that the world will get together and end wars forever, but it’s not going to happen. And I read that something like 10-20% of American families actually have negative income tax, when you factor in welfare, food stamps, subsidized medical, etc.
Dangerosa:
Of course, that’s assuming that government spending stays the same. If government spending goes down, then less money will be put into the economy and the two effects will cancel out.
The idea that government waste and elimination of the income tax are related is pretty silly. If you have a plan to eliminate waste, then let’s hear it. But the fact is, no one has been able to eliminate waste, and the fact that theorectically we could possibly maybe perhaps reduce government spending through waste reduction isn’t as important as the fact that we haven’t been able to.
sigh Income taxes were within the Constitutional powers of the Federal government before the Sixteenth Amendment was passed (c.f. Article I, section 8, clause 1).
The first Federal income tax was passed in 1861 to help fund the Civil War. And it was challenged. The challenge went all the way to the Supreme Court who, in the 1880 case of Springer v. United States (102 U.S. 586), declared income taxes to be indirect or excise taxes, completely within the powers of Congress to impose.
In 1894, though, another Supreme Court case named Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust Co. (157 U.S. 429) declared, by a 5-4 majority vote of the Justices, that taxes on income derived from property (e.g. rent) were equivalent to taxes on the value of the property itself, and were thus Direct Taxes within the meaning of Article I, Section 9, Clause 4 of the Constitution, which requires all direct taxes to be apportioned according to each State’s population.
Now, apportioned taxes are really messy to impose when you don’t know exactly how many dollars in taxes you’ll be collecting ahead of time. They require the amount of tax to be calculated on a State-by-State basis, which means that the States must collect the tax payments and then send exactly their apportioned amount to the Federal government and refund the rest in a fair manner. Congress strongly desired to avoid apportioned taxes. But now, if some kinds of income taxes had to be apportioned, and the rest were required not to be apportioned, and the Supreme Court could arbitrarily decide at any time whether a particular source of income was derived from property or not and retroactively nullify years’ worth of tax collection, then Congress had a real devil of a rat’s nest on its hands.
It was to clear up this whole apportioned/nonapportioned mess that the 16th Amendment was proposed and (three-and-a-half years later) ratified. Here is the text of the 16th Amendment – it’s one of the few Amendments I’ve memorized:
The most important words in the Amendment are “from whatever source derived”. With this Amendment, it no longer mattered whether the income being taxed was derived from property or not.
Incidentally, a later U.S. Supreme Court case, Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad, established that the 16th Amendment did not exclude income taxes from the uniformity clause of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 of the Constitution.
It is always good to remember, that of the 40 Industrialized nations, ALL have an Income tax. And, of these 40 nations, the USofA ranks 39th in overall tax burden. Turkey ranks 40th.
In 1880 the Supreme Court declared income taxes constitutional. Funny, a few years before that they declared slavery to be constitutional. The courts are subject to politics and, in historical context, have been wrong.
Um…are you thinking Dred Scott? Or are you thinking Plessy? 'Cause one of 'em was a good bit before 1880 (24 years, in fact), and one of 'em was about twenty years after. And neither of them declared slavery to be constitutional. (Though Dred Scottdid say that slaves were property…)
::: Dials 9-1-1 ::: “Help! There’s a fire in the kitchen! An outlet started fire!”
“OK, may I have your insurance number, please?”
“What?”
“Your insurance number, ma’am. Now that the city has reduced taxes, the fire department gets paid directly from the home-owner’s fire insurance, based on the individuals who actually use the service. It’s considered more fair and more cost-effective. So I need your insurance number.”
“Oh, wait… I have it here somewhere… hang on, it’s in my purse… [ lengthy pause ] ah, here it is… [ number deleted to ensure privacy ]”
“OK, got it, ma’am, and we’ll be right over… Oh, wait… Your policy doesn’t cover normal wear and tear. Did you say the fire started because of a frayed cord? I’m afraid that’s not covered.”
With any luck, and with the focus on cost-efficiency and reduced costs (taxes) for government services, we can have our police and fire departments be as cost-conscious as the current U.S. medical system. Not to mention things like national defense, the highway system, Food and Drug Admin, etc.
So many numbers get thrown about in tax discusions. Let me just comment upon a couple:
Any student who is actually paying 25% of his gross income in tax is either unable to fill out a 104EZ correctly or making a lot more money than I did as a student.
I currently do make a lot more money than when I was a student, comfortably above the national mean, even, and I paid far less than 40% of my gross income in income tax this year. I understand that people are often unwilling to share personal financial details on a public board, but can we at use “examples” of teh current system that are more accurately representative?
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*
Anyone still have a copy of their 1040 booklet? There’s a neat little pie chart inside of it listing what percentage of Federal income comes from which source, and what percentage of outgo falls into each category. I vaguely (but only vaguely) remember some of the percentages listed there.
But my impression was that about 70% of Federal income comes from business and income taxes; I believe about 40% was income taxes. Which means if you eliminate just personal income taxes, you’re taking away 40% of the Fed’s budget money. We can talk about waste and corruption all we want, but I don’t think anyone truly believes that a full 40% of the gov’s money goes into pork-barrel sink-holes. Unless you consider the mere existence of the Defense Department a pork-barrel sink-hole.
So we can’t give up the income without A) destroying a great deal of social programs (and, sure, you just think it can be taken care of by dropping the NEA and axing PBS. Just wait until they decide not to bother maintaining the Interstates) and/or B) gutting the military to the point where a small group of Canadian hunters could take over New England. Assuming they’d want it.
So how do we replace that income flow?
A) Sales taxes, as stated earlier. Except that sales taxes are one of the most regressive taxes around. After all, that’s not a tax upon income but a tax upon spending. So the guy who can save or invest his paycheck pays less taxes as a proportion of income than the guy who is barely able to buy food for his family.
B) Tariffs. Hey, we ran the country for a hundred years with tariffs as our main source of income. Of course, last time we hiked tariffs, it brought about The Great Depression, but I’m sure that nothing could hurt our new, top-of-the-line Internet economy. Say, how’s the stock market doing today?
C) User fees. Except- how are these different from taxes? Keep in mind that for most emergency services- police, fire, military- we’d be paying a yearly fee even if we don’t personally need their services; we just want them around in case we do need their services. And how is that different from any other government program? I don’t need Head Start right now; but when I have a kid, I might really want/need it. So I pay taxes for it now, and maybe I’ll use it and maybe I won’t. But I don’t see that as being much different from User fees.
JMCJ
“Y’know, I would invite y’all to go feltch a dead goat, but that would be abuse of a perfectly good dead goat and an insult to all those who engage in that practice for fun.” -weirddave, set to maximum flame
