I don’t see how that affects the argument. If the government takes my money, it’s preventing me from possessing it or spending it.
Since a “fair” tax disproportionately hits lower incomes harder, I’m confused why you want higher taxes for yourself and lower taxes for the extreme rich.
What have they done for you?
I think a sales tax is a reasonable idea, if it applies to all sales, like buying portions of companies, real estate, and other ways the rich spend their money.
Let’s be honest here, the fairest possible tax is one where every person pays exactly the same amount. So every US citizen has to pay $10,000 a year in federal taxes. That would have decrease every year as we descend into 3rd world status.
And if you make $20,000 a year, then what? You die in the streets?
Yup. Kind of tough to maintain the tax base that way. And the people who can just laugh off $10,000 a year won’t be sticking around either. But despite the disease, poverty, crime, and entire collapse of the system it will be fair, right?
I have heard people make twisted moral or legal arguments about why the government can’t tax the people. But (at least in the U.S.) we have seen the government and they is us.
How do you define “fair”? Our society generally accepts that regressive taxes are unfair, in which lower-income people face a greater hardship from taxation than higher-income people. If everyone paid the same amount, that would be regressive. That’s why income tax has marginal brackets and why groceries are not taxed. The fairest possible tax might be something like you pay a flat percentage of your disposable income after you pay for essentials, like food, clothing, housing, medical care.
I meant that in the exaggerated sense that ‘fair-taxers’ mean. Fair should be about your contribution in relation to what you receive. But I don’t believe there’s any way to reduce those concepts to agreement on fairness. We have a pretty good democratic process for resolving this matter already, could be better, but fair enough for me, so far anyway, could get worse also.
With all people (personal and corporate) owned by the government from the git-go, all assets and income are the government’s. With all licences issued by the government, the licencing fees equal to or greater than the income and assets of the licensee, the income and assets are the governments.
Problem solved: no need for taxation if the government owns and controls everything and everyone.
Alternately, just take assets and income from other countries and blow the shit out of any of them who protest. Again, problem solved.
Look, if you want the benefits of living in a society under the protection of the law that is based on rights (human rights, constitution rights, etc.) and in which you have a more or less equal vote on how laws are made and which laws are made, then you’d best suck it up and accept that there is a cost for living in the first world, rather than scavenging about while hiding from people who will take everything that you have whenever they feel like it, or enslave your, or if you are of not use, simply kill you to reduce competition for resources.
Quite simply, taxation is not theft. If you don’t like what taxes are spent on, or if you don’t like how high the taxes are, or if you don’t like certain tax exemptions, then speak to your legislators and vote, and speak with other citizens and encourage them to speak to their legislators and to vote.
Right now you are living in a flawed democracy. Work on that if you want to improve the lives of most of the people in your country, rather than whinging on about the illegality of taxation.
If you are one of those who believes that taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor via taxation for health care, education, law (regulation and enforcement), infrastructure, etc. is theft, then you should find somewhere without taxation and think long and hard about what life would be like for you there.
Of course, even a government run entirely on tariffs and user fees does not avoid the problem of “involuntary seizing of assets.” Sure, you can avoid tariffs by not importing goods - but an individual can avoid income taxes by not working, too.
BS. It’s only regressive if you put income in the denominator. I don’t know why you would, as it’s not really important how much money one makes. It matters what they spend. A poor person would pay $20 for spending $100. A rich person would pay $2,000 for spending $10,000. It’s not regressive, it’s flat.
Depends on how you define regressive. Generally it is;
What is ‘Regressive Tax’
A regressive tax is a tax that takes a larger percentage of income from low-income earners than from high-income earners. It is in opposition with a progressive tax, which takes a larger percentage from high-income earners. A regressive tax is generally a tax that is applied uniformly to all situations, regardless of the payer.
In that respect, a tax on consumption is the most regressive tax system possible, since it ignores income disparity.
It’s regressive because low-income people have to spend a much higher percentage of their income on basic necessities. A rich person saves and invests a huge portion of their income in comparison. A poor person would pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than a rich person. That’s regressive by definition.
Even a fixed rate income tax (neither progressive or regressive according to the above definition) is unfair to the poor. Paying $4000 out of a $20,000 /yr income is a much bigger hardship than paying $20,000 out of a $100,000 income.
Personally, it would suit me just fine if a national sales tax became the main form of revenue.
all you have to do to be a tax protestor is don’t buy anything. I doubt if Ive paid over $50 a year in sales taxes in the past couple of decades, most on utility bills. But then I haven’t filed an income tax return since 1991, either.
That doesn’t make a lot of sense. Taking what you’re saying at face value, you are paying sales tax (although not a lot) but you’re not paying income tax. If the income tax as eliminated and the sales tax as substantially raised to replace that revenue, you’d be paying a lot more sales tax without any reduction in your income tax. You’d be somebody who would be hurt the most by the change.
It makes sense in the policy that I advocate, even though it does not have a personal application in my case. Even if I had a high income, and therefore paid high income taxes, my frugal lifestyle would still leave me with a very low sales tax liability. So a sales-tax-heavy revenue base would still leave a taxpayer with an option to protest taxes by not paying for goods and services subject to the tax. Unlike most posters here, I evaluate my policy based on the common good, rather than my own selfish perspective. That unorthodox stance throws a lot of people off.
The difference would be that a person is now taxed on his productivity (measured by income), rather than being taxed on his consumption (measured by sales).
When it comes down to it, the government needs to collect $x in revenue, and nearly all of that revenue is going to come from taxes[sup]1[/sup]. It’s a zero-sum game–you can’t make a change in taxation policy that is better for everyone unless you reduce spending and revenue. The question is how to assess taxes in a way that is both fair and politically viable (the two goals are often in opposition). If we shift away from income tax to a consumption tax, people are still going to pay taxes, and it will hurt low-income people who must spend a higher portion of their income on basic necessities. It is generally agreed that a tax system shouldn’t place a higher burden on the poor, although the rich have more influence in Congress. The poor vote, but the rich fund campaigns.
If we take jtur88 literally, **jtur88 **has spent less than $500 a year on retail taxable goods (assuming 5% state sales tax). That’s an outlier. Just camp out at a Walmart or Costco cash register for an hour and see what Middle America is dragging home. I live in Virginia. Virginia and localities collected $6.1 billion in sales tax last year. With a population of 8.4 million people, that works out to $726 in sales tax for every man, woman, and child in the state, around 15 times what **jtur88 **pays.
- If you switch to a user fee system, as was alluded to in an earlier post, then every street is going to be a toll road; every park will have an entrance fee; you’ll pay every time you call the IRS, the SSA, the State Department, or any other agency; government web sites will have subscription fees; and I have no idea how you pay for the defense budget.
Don’t pat yourself on the back too hard. You’re claiming you avoid paying most taxes now and you would continue to avoid paying most taxes under the change you’re advocating.