Do you believe a FLAT TAX is Fair? Why / Why not?

[Theodarzna]

Nah, I just understand its a necessary evil.

Outside the Gods or Heavenly Mandates, the State is the only powers that can determine legal or legality.

So I am curious how you are deriving this except through your own very specific first principles.

[Thepersona]

That it is the most fair taxation format is axiomatic. No wonder Endus disagrees.

It's not, for many reasons (some that i've stated myself)

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I only pay for a car wash if I use it. Not the same with public services, many of which I never use and some of them I flat out oppose.

Yeah, no. even if you dont benefit personally, its (in most cases) the intelligent thing to do (to tax everyone and then give services), because you sometimes will benefit for some of them

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Stop with the flat tax nonsense. It is the economy version of anti vaxxers.

Oh yeah... but much more stupid and dangerous

[Mittens]

It's not, for many reasons (some that i've stated myself)

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Yeah, no. even if you dont benefit personally, its (in most cases) the intelligent thing to do (to tax everyone and then give services), because you sometimes will benefit for some of them

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Oh yeah... but much more stupid and dangerous

I agree, but it still is theft.

[Thepersona]

I agree, but it still is theft.

It's not theft fella. Taxes are a necessity for living in a society.

[Chickat]

You're literally just making shit up, at this point. You have no basis for the claim, and it flies in the face of reality's context.

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Progressive tax brackets avoid this by making the simple adjustment that income is taxed by bracket regardless. In your example, someone making $85k/year would pay 5% on the first 25k, 10% on everything between 25k and 50k, 15% on income from 50k-75k, and 20% only on income over 75k. Earning income that puts you into a new bracket doesn't affect the income tax you'd pay on the portion that represents your old salary, just whatever the raise was.

Interesting. Thank you. What is your ideal taxation method?

[Thepersona]

Apparently he agrees with that statement. "But it's still theft! Because! Well, because it's theftt!"

uhm... isn't that circular reasoning?

[Mittens]

It's not theft fella. Taxes are a necessity for living in a society.

It being practical doesn't stop it from being theft. I'm literally forced to make payments to the government either I get beaten into submission and then forced to pay taxes or the government gets to keep all of my stuff.

[Macaquerie]

To me it's part of a broader argument: do we want the government to effectively redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor?

If the answer is yes, then a progressive tax is a way to do it (you could also do it with a flat tax but increase payouts to the poor so effectively you end up at a similar place).

And to me, I think there are great arguments for redistribution of wealth - mainly that you want to encourage economic mobility and opportunity for those who work hard to get ahead, and without some redistribution those opportunities are vanishingly small for the poor and you risk creating a highly stratified (and unstable) society (because stratified societies tend to get overthrown). You have to balance that benefit against the benefit of success paying off, and like everything I don't think one extreme or the other makes sense - distributing all wealth evenly doesn't work, and no redistribution doesn't work great either.

So then, how to redistribute? A progressive tax system makes a great deal of sense to me because it is basically directly redistributive and also fairly easy to manage, where if you had a flat tax system you'd have to figure out how to redistribute after you received everything.

Progressive income taxes are a fairly inefficient way to redistribute wealth though, what's needed is a tax on wealth itself, not income. After all, the idea should be to encourage people to earn money but then to turn around and spend it, putting it back into the economy rather than simply hoarded in unproductive investments like it is nowadays. It would be pretty tricky to collect, since many rich people have their wealth tied up in illiquid assets and are actually quite cash poor, but it's a much better solution that trying to hike up income tax rates which is politically infeasible for the moment anyway.

[Kellhound]

Just simplify it down to first $20,000 is tax exempt, all income over that is taxed at, say, 15% with no deductions, credits, etc. Do something similar with companies.

[PosPosPos]

Then the poor are all felons for not paying anything. Im glad we can agree on something

Yeah, you die if you don't eat though, and that's magnitudes worse.

[Kellhound]

That's no where near high enough on both the tax free amount and the flat tax rate.

Definitely high enough on the tax free portion, especially when it you consider it is an individual rate (as all taxpayers would be treated as individuals). As for the tax rate, that was just a number, though currently the US government gets less than 12% of the US personal income as taxes. Companies would likely see a tax increase under this concept, which would offset any actual decline in personal income tax.

[RaoBurning]

Who's to say the guy making 20k will ALWAYS be making 20k his entire life? As an example, in the United States, there is high income mobility.

We have the 2nd worst income mobility in the developed world. The data is not ambiguous on this point in the least, and like most blatant lies I wonder how it survives so well.

Note: Higher is not better.

[Fencers]

Definitely unfair. Also infeasible, punitive and extending hardship/slavery.

1.5k means a lot more to the guy making $10k/yr (this is grossly irresponsible by the way) than 15k to the guy making 100k/yr. Value simply can not be conceived as such.

Flat taxation is one of the most idiotic and dangerous ideas floated to the ignorant and uneducated.

Lastly, taxation is not theft. One is not entitled to the economy, safety or liberty of their nation without paying in it;s well being. At the end of the day, humans are cooperative and all our lasting social system are really just communistic. Society will never stand with the individual at the cost of the many for long.

These are nonsense notions brought up in the OP.

[Trifle]

Just simplify it down to first $20,000 is tax exempt, all income over that is taxed at, say, 15% with no deductions, credits, etc. Do something similar with companies.

15% is wrong, for starters. Take this table, for example:



You can see the total average tax rate is 20%, so unless you want a sharp dip in federal income (which means huge cuts, individual taxes are 50% of federal income) your flat tax will be 20%. Now check on the table, and you'll see that changing the flat tax rate to 20% means huge tax cuts for people earning $200k or more (~4% of the population), and huge tax raises for people earning less than $200k (~96% of the population).

If that doesn't immediately cause you some concern, then there's not really any point continuing to have a conversation with you.

[Deleted]

It's always funny to me how the US who has one of the biggest christian populations in the world is so apt at completely disregarding the very basics of what the bible teaches when it comes to caring about others.

The Widow's Offering
41As Jesus was sitting opposite the treasury, He watched the crowd placing money into it. And many rich people put in large amounts. 42Then one poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amounted to a small fraction of a denarius. 43Jesus called His disciples to Him and said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more than all the others into the treasury.…

They knew this shit even 2000 years ago. It's not about how much you give, it's about how much of what you have that matters.

[Kellhound]

15% is wrong, for starters. Take this table, for example:



You can see the total average tax rate is 20%, so unless you want a sharp dip in federal income (which means huge cuts, individual taxes are 50% of federal income) your flat tax will be 20%. Now check on the table, and you'll see that changing the flat tax rate to 20% means huge tax cuts for people earning $200k or more (~4% of the population), and huge tax raises for people earning less than $200k (~96% of the population).

If that doesn't immediately cause you some concern, then there's not really any point continuing to have a conversation with you.

Its like I didnt point out raising more taxes from companies....

[kamuimac]

Do you believe that a government having a flat tax on its citizens is a fair way to collect tax income for the various programs and expenses of a country?

For example, a 15% flat tax rate would essentially have everyone paying something to contribute to the society in which they live.

The guy making 10k per year would pay $1,500 in taxes, and the guy making 100k per year would pay $15,000 in taxes.

The guy making more pays more in dollars, but the tax percentage is the same as the guy making 10k per year.

IMHO, this is the fairest way to collect tax income from a country's citizens.


Keep in mind, stealing from someone is still stealing, no matter if you vote to do so or not.

Regarding Income Inequality:



Why Income Inequality is actually a GOOD thing:

definetly yes - time to stop pretending we live in equl society where person working in mcdonalds is worth as much as succesfull buisnessman or neursurgeon - there are clearly supperior people in society and they should make more and live on much higher level then uneducated plebs

time to end the socialism and communism - social support is only making lazy people more lazy .

[Trifle]

Its like I didnt point out raising more taxes from companies....

I didn't read the whole thread and in the post I quoted you didn't !

Corporate income taxes are only ~9% of total revenue, so fiddling with those won't accomplish much. Payroll taxes are a lot higher, but even those are only 34% (2/3 of individual income tax revenue) so if you lower individual income tax by whatever amount, the payroll taxes have to increase by a higher amount than that to generate the same revenue.

Edit: note that payroll taxes are already a flat rate, for whatever reason. Think around 12.4% total... Reducing average income tax from 20% to 15% would mean payroll taxes go up to 17%, which would hurt small companies quite a lot and probably cause huge layoffs in bigger companies too.

[d00mGuArD]

Everyone should pay the same for the same services.
Flat tax should not even be a % of your salary.
Should be a flat same amount of money for everyone. Since with that money we all receive the same services

[Kellhound]

I didn't read the whole thread and in the post I quoted you didn't !

Corporate income taxes are only ~9% of total revenue, so fiddling with those won't accomplish much. Payroll taxes are a lot higher, but even those are only 34% (2/3 of individual income tax revenue) so if you lower individual income tax by whatever amount, the payroll taxes have to increase by a higher amount than that to generate the same revenue.

Edit: note that payroll taxes are already a flat rate, for whatever reason. Think around 12.4% total... Reducing average income tax from 20% to 15% would mean payroll taxes go up to 17%, which would hurt small companies quite a lot and probably cause huge layoffs in bigger companies too.

Which is why you tax EBITA, not payroll.