So... how much tax would you voluntarily pay?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve seen a lot of comments about ‘coercive’ taxation on this board. Personally while I agree that taxation is involuntary, I also think it’s the payoff for living in a democracy, and providing services to the public - but I also hate the thought of tax being overly high due to excess, corruption, and waste by government.

Of course, most people would rather pay no tax at all, but let’s be realistic: if you have a government and a system to upkeep, you have to pay at least something to keep it going.

So, in your ideal world, and bearing in mind that this isn’t a magic world where things cost nothing, how much tax would you voluntarily pay?

  1. What proportion of your income would you give up voluntarily?
  2. What should be payed for by tax?
  3. Of your personal tax contribution, what should it be spent on (expressin % terms out of 100%)?
2

I confess that I would probably convince myself that other people, with more wealth had the real obligation. I can see myself being just more self-indulgent.

If it occurred to me that this behavior was inconsistent with my ideals, I would begin to pay. I can see myself worrying that other selfish folks were better positioned to pay more but were not doing so.

I fear that I would not do my part. Sad but true. I have convinced myself that the lifestyle I currently have is a necessity. If I were willing to live a simpler life, I could give lots of money to good causes. But I don’t.

3

Using a normal paycheque from my desk from two months ago.

Total deductions/Gross Pay *100 = 22%

I can live with that.

4

Before I answer, I’d like you to frame your question to include the scope of the government you’re talking about, Jjimm. Do you mean a government that does nothing beyond securing the rights of its citizens, or do you mean a multi-level federal/state/local government with a $3 trillion budget that does everything from maintaining dams in dry lake beds to financing every Congressman’s hometown boondoggle?

5

Well I guess you get to express that in terms of your resource allocation. If you allocate 0% to defense, then we can assume that defense isn’t state funded.

6

Okay. I’m willing to pay somewhere around $1,200 a year. But you can’t really call that a tax, since I’m willing:

[ul]
[li]Fee: You walk into an office and negotiate an amount you are willing to pay for whatever service the vendor is willing to sell.[/li]
Tax: You walk into an office and are met by armed men who take whatever they want, and give you whatever they please — if anything .[/ul]

7

The purpose of taxes is to fund the government. The purpose of government is to look after the well-being of its people. That is, the government represents its people to the rest of the world, defends its people against aggressors, and provides infrastructure required to support its people. Taxes should cover the cost of government’s doing what it is required to do. Taxes should be higher when the government provides more services, and lower when it doesn’t. The problem as I see it, is that we do not get enough value for the money we are paying. Also, spending more on the military than is necessary for defense takes money away from more useful programs.

Personally, I think 33% is a good rate. For this money, I would expect that the government would represent our interests to the rest of the world, protect us from foreign attacks (but not to start wars), provide health care to all citizens, and to provide higher education.

There have been several debates over health care and education, so I’ll just touch on them here. Healthy workers are more productive, thus they contribute more money to the economy. Thus, Universal Health Care is good for the country. Similarly, higher education is good for the country because people with higher education tend to make more money, and thus contribute more of it in the form of taxes.

It can be in our interest to give money to foreign nations, and a strong military is important to defend our interests; but how much is too much? How many ballistic missile submarines and super aircraft carriers do we need? Should we continue to prop up various governments, or should we encourage them to stand on their own feet?

Domestically, what about Welfare? I’ve met people who are – I’ll be blunt – lazy. They want the government to give them money for no work. On the other hand, I knew a “welfare mom” with four kids who used her Welfare money to improve her education. She made a career for herself in Aerospace. In my opinion if we were to spend more money on education and health care, fewer people would be content to sit on their butts. (I was out of work for a while, and am still underemployed. But better to be underemployed than to not work at all! I like to think most people would rather work than not.)

So to answer the specific questions in the OP:
[ul][li]33%[/li][li]Services to the People:[/li][list][li]Universal Health Care[/li][li]Subsidies for higher education for any citizen who wants it (to be repaid through National Service or through payroll deductions over, say, 30 years)[/li][li]National defense sufficient to carry out our policies and to support our friends, but not enough to be a bully[/ul][/li]I don’t personally have enough information to decide percentages.[/list]

8

Whatever it computes out to be. If I was the benevolent dictator, my course of action would be as follows:
1- Determine what government services the public truly wants and needs
2- Determine the cost of those services
3- Determine a reasonable amortization of the national debt
4- Determine an equitable means to raise the funds needed in points 2 and 3.

9

10% or so.

Military spending should be kept about where it is now. Cut everything else, to varying degrees.

Currently military spending is about 20% of the budget. Social security, medicare, and medicade being discontinued would free up about 60% of the budget. Whatever is left could be trimmed down to about a quarter of it’s current size.

So, at the end of the day…

80% military
20% everything else (highways, courts, etc)

10

I’d certainly want to pay less than the ~50% I do now.

I’ll admit that here in Denmark, we do have a lot of benefits like free healthcare, but still I don’t think it outweights the massive taxes we pay.

If I had a choice, one of the first things I’d cut founding for was our millitary. They could certainly have saved a lot of money by not drafting me to slack off as much as I could for the duration.

11

I’m a tax loving liberal who thinks the wealthy (including myself) pay to little taxes.

If it were voluntary, I’d pay $0.

I’m a selfish bitch, which is why I think that government has a responsibility to collect taxes as fairly as possible.

12

Not to question your veracity, Dangerosa, but just trying to understand here. How can both those things co-exist? How is that, on the one hand, you are “a selfish bitch” and would volunteer nothing, but on the other hand you care enough to want someone to take it from you, keep a large cut, and then give what remains out to others?

13

How much I’m willing to pay really depends on how much confidence I have that it’s being spent wisely. For instance, I’m very leery of any big business subsidies. My husband was in the Air Force for some years, during a “lean and mean” period, and I saw an incredible amount of waste going on. Just one example, when an Air Force base in this town was closed, the government spent a LOT of money in refurbishing the place, fixing up old buildings and painting them and the like. I think that this was a total waste of money. Anyone who wanted to buy that base would more than likely tear down the buildings, thus destroying all the resources put into them.

I’m more likely to pay for things like universal health care, especially for kids. I know that here in Texas, we have a LOT of uninsured kids who don’t get health care, even though their parent(s) are employed full-time. Not giving kids preventive health care is very shortsighted…in the long run, they’ll end up costing the taxpayers much more. Same for schooling and other kids’ programs…we can spend a little money now to teach and socialize the kids, or we can shell out big bucks later to put them in prison, with all the attendant social costs.

I think that everyone, adults and children, should get basic health care either free or at a low cost copay. I’m not sure where to draw the line on basic health care, but I consider most cosmetic surgery to be non-basic, while vaccinations are very basic.

I don’t know how much, percentage-wise, I’d want the money spent. I’m not really happy with the way it’s being spent these days, though.

14

I agree with some of what you say, Lynn. For example, I don’t like corporate welfare. But again I’m confused about how a particular position can be held, specifically “that everyone, adults and children, should get basic health care either free or at a low cost copay”. How is this physically possible without slave labor? I mean, if it is free or low cost to everyone, then where is the money coming from? If it’s coming from taxpayers, then it is not free to them, right?

15

The OP is flawed on many levels. The current gov’t is taking money from the producers and gives it to the feeloaders which creates a disinsentive to produce and lowers the GDP and devaluse the currency. Also as pointed out if it’s optional it’s not a tax.

W/ that out of the way, I feel that 5-10% of income would be a fair and just amount (after all God himself only asks for 10%), if a gov’t can’t opperate with taking in 10% of the income of every person in the country we have serious problems (oh yea we do).

16

Since I started it, I tend to disagree. It’s only flawed wrt your fundamental disagreement with taxation. If this is the case, and you answer my questions directly, you are welcome to say 0%, nothing, 0%, and you’ll be grand.

Sometimes I wonder, despite your apparent wisdom, whether you have ever lived outside the US. This is the case in many European countries, and we LOVE this situation. The heakth services we extend to the poorest of our populations is not the best in the world, but it is still fantastic compared to the rest of the world.

Anyway, since I started the thread, I reckon I should give my own opinion.

I’m with Dangerosa on this. I’m a selfish mofo. Were I not ‘coerced’ into it, I would pay absolutely nothing at all, and let someone else pick up the bill. (By the way, the whole thing about being threatened with guns only actually happens in gun-prolific democracies. In non-gun-prolific democracies such as the one I currently live in, armed force isn’t an issue.)

But this attitude is wack. If it were left up to me, and people like me, there would be no money to fund anything. No governement, no defense, no legal system, indeed nothing. Under me as a voluntary taxpayer, any Government would become some kind of underfunded charity, like PBS or something. Utterly amateurish and more incompetent than it is at present.

So to my own questions:

  1. What proportion of your income would you give up voluntarily?
    About 25 - 30%.
  2. What should be payed for by tax?
    The govt., legal system, defense, fundamental healthcare, infrastructure, education. And, alas, the civil service that runs them.
  3. Of your personal tax contribution, what should it be spent on (expressin % terms out of 100%)?
    I’m too hard a taskmaster. Will have to give this some more thought myself.
17

You can disagree, and I can accept that I am playing king of this great republic and can set tax rates, but the current spending levels is hurting future growth. radical changes to the structure of the gov’t would be also required including (but not limited to) internal security, ‘welfare’, and retirement. I can’t wrap my mind around the gov’t ever needing more then 10% of the income of the country, and feel more then that is harmful and actually above that level actually causes a devaluation of the currency causuing the gov’t to take in less actual ‘productive power’

My take on it would be a total tax rate of no more then 10% should be in The Constitution.

18

Simple Lib, I have a greater fear of getting shafted by my fellow Americans than getting shafted by my government. I assume all people are basically selfish (see people driving really nice cars when they could be feeding the homeless - including myself) and that if tax were voluntary, few people would pay anything. I’d be subsidizing their clean water so they can drive BMWs? No thank you, I’ll buy bottled water and the poor will just have to figure out how to distill theirs on their stovetop. If the rest of the rich aren’t paying, I’m not paying either.

But if I can be reasonably assured that most people do pay taxes is some manner approximating fair (approximating it is good enough - it will never be 100% fair for everyone), I’m willing to pay my fair share - which - because I’m fortunate enough to afford it - I happen to believe is more than most people’s fair share.

I’m the liberal around here who likes the idea of social welfare programs, because it means that I’ll never be obligated to stick lazy good for nothing relatives in my basement because they won’t bother to hold a job that will feed their kids. (I actually have no current close lazy good for nothing relatives, just in case Brainiac4 comes in here and thinks I’m talking about some of my in-laws). Completely selfish and self centered reasons for thinking these things are good.

19
  1. What proportion of your income would you give up voluntarily?

About 10%

  1. What should be payed for by tax?

Looking after young, sick and old.
Defense should be slashed to a pittance.
Britain’s an island with Europe on one side and America on the other.
As long as we keep our nose clean there’s no reason why we should need any defence capabilities at all.

  1. Of your personal tax contribution, what should it be spent on (expressin % terms out of 100%)?

Higher %'s on education.
Lower %'s on defence.

Unemployment changed to a voucher scheme rather than cash.

20

God gets 10% of my gross income.

I can’t see voluntarily giving Uncle Sam more than God, but I’ll be a good citizen and give up 10% of my gross for taxes. (We DO have a country to fund, here.)

Unless the government starts spending it on stupid stuff, then I reserve the right to hang on to my tax money until Uncle Sam can learn responsibility. (Hey, it works for children and allowances.)

What would my personal taxes spent on?

  1. Defense. People in the military shouldn’t be paid so little that they’re eligible for welfare.
  2. Education

Cut all foreign aid except to Israel and countries who are actually our friends. Tell the rest of 'em to suck it.

Salaries of elected representatives would be capped. I can deal with the President making 200k. Senators and Congressmen? 100k, tops. The average Senator’s salary … just their salary alone was 150k, and they don’t DO anything. Add in what they’re stealing and they’re probably pulling down more like 250k. Screw that.

And while I’m controlling where the taxes go, all federal medical research money will be divvied up according to the number of Americans that have that particular disease. Heart disease would get the most money, then whatever cancer is #2 on the list, etc. Private organizations of course would be welcome to throw money at whatever disease they wanted, but Uncle Sam’s dollars should be handed out strictly in proportion to how many people are dying.