There’s already a (local) flat tax on land value, everywhere, isn’t there? Is it progressive in effect? Or is it regressive in effect (since if you pay rent part of it goes to your landlord’s property tax, if you buy something in a store part of the price goes to pay the store’s landlord’s property tax, etc.)?
Who mentioned Republicans?
Since no one responded to my deduction point.
Doing away with deductions would result in major disruptions to the economy. If you dumped the mortgage deduction, you’d have a lot of people paying more taxes. It’s fine to say it is revenue neutral,. but that doesn’t mean revenue neutral for each person. There are clearly going to be losers and winners, and I have a sneaking suspicion of who the winners are going to be.
Not just that, but municipal bonds are now tax free. is that going to stay? If not, you’ve just increased the borrowing costs of states and municipalities around the country, and their bad situation is going to get worse.
I don’t know how property tax works elsewhere, but in California it is anything but flat or progressive. Instead of actual value, you are taxed based on the value of the property when it was purchased (or re-assessed for major improvements), then adjusted by 2% annually. And that’s two percent of the tax, not two percentage points. So two people who own identical homes on identical lots on the same street can be paying hugely different tax amounts. On top of that, most localities have parcel taxes, which are flat taxes on real estate regardless of value, basically $X per deed. Parcel taxes can be enacted on the city, county, or school district level (school districts don’t conform to other boundaries).
Probably shouldn’t be having kids if you’re only making $30,000 annually.
That excludes quite a lot of people, since the US median household income is about $31,000 per annum.
Oh I’m not saying it should be against the law or anything. I just don’t think it’s very financially responsible considering DoA estimates put costs of raising a child between $11-13,000 annually.
And of course if you get laid off, injured, or have your hours cuts the responsible thing is to kill your children.
Notice that I said, “having kids”. As in, you shouldn’t be actively building a family if your income is in or around $30,000.
Somebody needs to read the Road to Wigan Pier.
Or possibly G. K. Chesterton’s take on the feeble minded bill.
That cite gives a way lower than any number I’ve seen before. Rather than Wikipedia, let’s look at what the US Census Bureau has to say:
The Wikipedia cite comes from the OECD, and refers to equivalized income. That seems to mean that additional household members who don’t work (such as children) are counted, but at a reduced rate. This would then be offset by the household members who do work counting more, since their money does not have to factor in the cost of shelter or other household expenses (as this is already done for the primary house owner).
I’m guessing the U.S. census information just counts people who are working.