Nothing is certain in life except death and taxes. The desire to tax someone to death is something liberals do under the guise of fairness.
I understand raising taxes on the rich under the theory that the government needs more money, and only the rich have it. I don’t agree with it, but I understand it.
But to tax someone more, when you know it won’t even raise revenue, just to knock them down a peg or two, is the antithesis of everything I thought America stood for. If there was ever any evidence that Obama had radical tendencies, this is it.
Well, if Obama is “looking at” the matter from a perspective that believes that rich people should be penalized for no other reason than being rich, then most rational folks have reason to be afraid.
Only if it has no other justification.
Regards,
Shodan
If the moon were made of mayonnaise, Obama would be Greek.
Well, perhaps most rational folks have only limited information. Or maybe those of us who worry about the instability of egalitarian democracy in a country with a ruling class hyperrich & getting richer aren’t all as irrational as you assume. But it is possible to be rational & in favor of measures to counter the accrual of economy-distorting, culture-distorting, politically dangerous levels of wealth.
Of course, if we were really rational & really serious about that in this country, we’d have a confiscatory wealth tax.
Hey, waitaminnit, why is incentivizing investment so important anyway? As the Economic Policy Institute correctly points out, at this point – not always, perhaps, but during a recession or near-recession as we have now – “businesses need customers, not incentives to increase capacity.”
You mean customers who have less money due to higher taxes?
Somehow I don’t think raising the capital gains tax would have much negative effect on aggregate consumer demand or purchasing power.
Working at a business that is feeling the crunch, I’d say you are exactly right. We need people with money they are spending today rather than investing.
Taxes are a necessary evil. In order for the country to work the government has to get/take/confiscate money from the citizenry. The only moral obligation is that they 1) take as little as possible and 2) they take equally from everyone. There are some people who are destitute, so we draw a line and say, okay you don’'t have to pay anything. (Though I think we should ask them to “pay” with some kind of volunteering.)
Hence the fairness of a flat tax. People pay the same percentage. Whatever the rate, if it’s fair it’s equally fair for us all. If it’s unfair, it’s equally unfair for us all.
What some politicians don’t seem to understand, particularly those with a “D” next to their names, it is NOT THEIR MONEY.
Well, that’s been the popular meme until the current president with the R next to his decided to change it.
I’ve been in favor of a flat tax myself but in another thread someone mentioned that a graduted tax system is supposed to make taxes have an equal impact on different income levels. That doesn’t seem horribly unfair to me. When it comes to dealing with the multifaceted problems of a modern society there is no mathmatical formula that says “fair” to everyone.
X% means X%. If x= 15% and you make 40k you pay 6k. If you make 100k you pay 15k. You make 400k, you pay 60k. It’s as fair as if there were no taxes and everyone gets to keep what they earn. Of course, some people view that as unfair in itself, who there is no use arguing with.
Well yah, I know what it means. I tend to favor the flat tax myself, with a lot fewer tax credits and deductions. It still doesn’t address all the issues. Depending on the cost of living that 6K at 40 grand is a lot more crucial for a family at that level than the the 15k for a family at that 100K level.
You might be of the opinion that it doesn’t matter as long as it looks really fair on paper, or appeals to your own particular sense of fairness but that’s not reality.
How about a family of four earning 30k or less? Do they pay the same? What if that 15% they pay means they can’t buy health insurance for their kids? Still fair? If not and we start figuring deductions then who gets them and how much do they get.
Then we’re off and running into tax laws being manipulated and what seems fair to different groups.
Flat tax also doesn’t address the fact that most other tax systems in place other than income tax in the U.S. are regressive - or flat. Social Security, sales tax, and property tax tend to be regressive taxes - i.e. the rich pay less in SS tax (its capped), less proportionally in sales tax (they don’t spend every cent they make, they invest a good deal of it, or defer taxes on it), and often pay less proportionally in property tax (unless you buy property proportionally valued to your income - which a lot of rich people don’t - there is only so much you can do in terms of owning houses and cars). Income tax is really the only progressive tax we have in place. And of course, capital gains which is a relatively flat tax - but has a low tax rate (to compensated for inflation and encourage investment) and which is generally only paid for by the wealthy.
Brainiac4 and I have a pretty high tax rate on income, and pay LESS proportionally in taxes now than we made when I was single and made $18k a year. We pay a LOT in taxes, but we top out SS, we pay a much smaller proportion of our income in property tax, and we pay very little proportionally in sales tax. We have a lot of capital gains and dividend/interest income lowering our tax rate, we defer taxes on quite a bit of income through 401ks and deferred comp plans. When I didn’t make much money, I had a large house value in proportion to my income, that really isn’t necessary now (we live is "less house than we could afford), I spent most of the income I had coming in so paid a lot in sales taxes (less than many because I live in Minnesota where we don’t tax food or clothing). Plus the past 20 years have been a bonanza in terms of tax breaks for “the rich” - which for these purposes always includes us - car tabs used to be based on car value here, Ventura changed that to be relatively flat, so now we can drive nicer cars and pay the same taxes as someone else pays for their beater, Bush gave us $6k a year in tax breaks, etc. Its too bad Brainiac4’s grandmother didn’t die a year later, we’d have saved ourselves mid five figures in estate taxes.
No, no flat tax program seriously suggested was anything like that. Some had a floor- it would be 28% above $15,000 a year and nothing below. No revenue neutral program can be 15% either, it is more like 30%, it all depends on whether or not the flat tax also replces FICA and if everything is taxed.
In general, every semi-realistic revenue neutral “flat tax” program I have seen makes the poor pay the same (nothing) the rich pay less, and thus the middle class pays more.
Here’s one wiki "Dick Armey has advocated a flat tax on all income in excess of an amount shielded by household type and size. For example, draft legislation proposed by Armey would allow married couples filing jointly to deduct $26,200, unmarried heads of household to deduct $17,200, and single adults, $13,100. $5,300 would be deducted for each dependent. A household would pay tax at a flat rate of 17% on the excess. Businesses would pay a flat 17% rate on all profits. Others have put forth similar proposals with various rates and deductions. Armey defined income to include only salary, wages, and pensions; capital gains and all other sources of wealth appreciation were excluded from taxation under his proposal.[15]
Note that Armeys plan would apparently leave FICA in place, and is **not **revenue neutral, thus it is specious:
http://www.ncpa.org/ba/ba136.html
*A Tax Cut. If the Armey plan for tax simplification were completely revenue neutral, it would require a tax rate in the range of 19 to 20 percent. Establishing a rate of 17 percent, therefore, constitutes a tax cut. The loss of revenue is paid for by capping government spending,including so-called entitlements. Also, the 17 percent rate is phased in, starting at 20 percent and falling to 17 percent after three years. Thus the deficit would not rise under the Armey plan.
*
Any plan that is not revenue neutral is specious unless the needed spending cuts are identified up front. If Armey think’s it’s so easy to cut spending by 20%, let’s see him do it first. Any tax plan that relies upon a 20% reduction in spending can cut taxes by 20%, no duh. :rolleyes:
If you can find a realistic and revenue neutral flat tax proposal, I’d like to see it.
Yes, because money lost to capital gains tax is somehow different. And money pulled out of the stock market wasn’t really needed because the DOW is driven by fairness and good wishes. If only the Soviet Union had figured out that taxing the rich was the way to go.
Yes, because everybody pays the income tax. How many Americans pay capital gains tax?
What does the stock market really do for the economy? The initial public offering of a stock does something for the economy, in that it generates capital for the issuing corporation; after that, shares are traded back and forth between speculators like chips in a casino, but the issuing corporation gets nothing out of that.
People with retirement accounts. IE, voters such as the teacher’s union.
For starters, the corporation IS the stockholder. And as the company grows it issues more stock or borrows from a bank. Either way, it’s the liquidity of the market that makes money available.
I own a great deal of stock in retirement accounts and there’s no CGT.
For* starters*, but the stock is washed a zillion times after it. Dudes gambling on the stock market do very little for the companies stock they are playing with.
Not now. But greedy people like you don’t deserve this ill-gotten money because it’s unfair to those who can’t afford to invest. Which is the point of this thread.
Gambling is a game of chance and is devoid of ownership. The stock market involves purchasing a percentage of a company. Anyway you slice a tax hike there will be a removal of real money from the market system.