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

[Endus]

If you eliminate tax breaks for the rich it is indeed fair. Bernie Sanders only paid 13 1/2% in taxes, tell me how that is fair for a family making 1/10th of him paying a higher tax rate?

If the issue is tax breaks and exemptions, why not just deal with those, rather than mucking about with the tax brackets themselves, which aren't the problem according to your own position here?

[Deianeira]

But how is it "unethical and unequitable?" Paying the same rate regardless of what you make seems like the fairest way to pay into a government tax system. How is it fair to force people who make more to pay a higher tax percentage? Shouldn't we be creating ways to help poor people become better off, rather than trying to make rich people poor?

Flat tax puts everyone on equal footing. As the poor / middle class people start to become better off in life, and make more money, so too does the raw dollars they pay into the system because they pay the equal % no matter the amount of money they make.

In this system people who make more PAY MORE. People who make less PAY LESS. Whats not equitable about that?

That must be the dumbest statement ever, as if a person earning 1million that pay 35%(350k) would be poor, they would still be able to live a luxury Life.

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That is not how exemptions work. This is a painful concept that so many people fail to grasp. It's along the same lines of people who say "Working overtime isn't worth it because it will put me in a higher tax bracket so I won't make any more money".

Under what I said, the first $30,000 would be tax free (exempt). Anything you make past that mark would be taxed at 30%.

So if you made $30,000, you take home $30,000.

If you make $30,001, you take home $30,000.67, paying $0.33 in tax.

Yes that is what people don ynderstand whn they hear "progressive tax" They dont understand that you pay a certian tax only from the level it starts ie. 30k in your example and all the way up to the next bracket and so on

[Jaylock]

Forbes disagrees.

I've watched this video several times and I couldn't agree more with Mr. Forbes.

The time savings alone as well as the savings from having to hire accountants and tax professionals that know the complicated tax laws here would save people billions of dollars. Which means more money in the economy. More money for people to spend on things other than the red tape that surrounds our tax code.

[Endus]

I've watched this video several times and I couldn't agree more with Mr. Forbes.

The time savings alone as well as the savings from having to hire accountants and tax professionals that know the complicated tax laws here would save people billions of dollars. Which means more money in the economy. More money for people to spend on things other than the red tape that surrounds our tax code.

It's a bullshit argument. I imagine most Canadians file their own taxes themselves, without anyone helping them directly. There's electronic systems that make it a snap to do, and the deductions and such are easy to calculate and apply. The complexity in your tax system has nothing to do with tax brackets; if you can handle Grade 10 math, you can handle progressive tax brackets with a pocket calculator. A flat tax doesn't make things significantly simpler, and if your issue is the rat's nest of complicated exceptions and breaks, you can address that without a flat tax just as easily.

The whole thing screams of trying to shoehorn in unnecessary changes while talking about an unrelated problem.

[Total Crica]

You realize that the money going to accountants and tax professionals IS money in the economy, right?

Everyone's job IS money in the economy. The robots are going to take alot of those jobs anyway once the AI revolution is in full swing, just like they did during the industrial revolution. If it's ok for a robot to take our jobs, it's ok for simplicity to take our jobs as well. I think the end goal of NO ONE having a job (fully automated AI) will be better for everyone.

[Jaylock]

It's a bullshit argument. I imagine most Canadians file their own taxes themselves, without anyone helping them directly. There's electronic systems that make it a snap to do, and the deductions and such are easy to calculate and apply. The complexity in your tax system has nothing to do with tax brackets; if you can handle Grade 10 math, you can handle progressive tax brackets with a pocket calculator. A flat tax doesn't make things significantly simpler, and if your issue is the rat's nest of complicated exceptions and breaks, you can address that without a flat tax just as easily.

The whole thing screams of trying to shoehorn in unnecessary changes while talking about an unrelated problem.

Did you even watch the fucking video? If you did, you would understand that in the US, BILLIONS of dollars are spent on tax preparation because of how complex the tax code is, especially when you start making more money, and have investments, and interest paid on loans, and what can and can not be deducted, and what qualifies and all the other shit in the shity tax system we have here in the US.

Please do your homework before making uninformed statements Endus, you're better than that.

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You realize that the money going to accountants and tax professionals IS money in the economy, right?

Yep, that pretty much sums up liberal / leftist big government thinking. Create red tape, regulations and complex laws to create an artificial job market to produce tax professionals who study the red tape and understand the complex tax law...

But hey, if we didn't have the complex regulations and red tape, and a person had a 1 page tax form they filled out themselves that was simple.... No need for tax professionals. No need to spend my money on unnecessary jobs directly stemming from government regulation.

[Hiricine]

Its still unfair, someone who makes lots of money a year pays a much higher amount in taxes but generally gets much less in benefits or costs much less (at least proportionally) than someone paying a lot less in taxes.

Also fairness isn't a standard that is generally accepted when it comes to tax policy anyways.

Not to say that it wouldn't be MORE fair than the current tax system.

[Total Crica]

someone who makes lots of money a year pays a much higher amount in taxes but generally gets much less in benefits

Incorrect. In order to benefit MORE from money, one must make MORE money.

[Z-Man]

Everyone's job IS money in the economy. The robots are going to take alot of those jobs anyway once the AI revolution is in full swing, just like they did during the industrial revolution. If it's ok for a robot to take our jobs, it's ok for simplicity to take our jobs as well. I think the end goal of NO ONE having a job (fully automated AI) will be better for everyone.

At least better for firefighters, soldiers, and prison guards. Everyone else will probably die in the riots or starve.

[Total Crica]

At least better for firefighters, soldiers, and prison guards. Everyone else will probably die in the riots or starve.

Firefighters, soldiers, and prison guards don't have a better life, they RISK their lives to protect people from harm.

[Jaylock]

You're changing your argument now. Everything you just said is irrelevant to your original claim that somehow the money going towards these people removes it from the economy. What removes money from the economy is taxing companies less because then it just stays at the top and goes in some rich person's bank account.

Can I ask you a real honest question? Do you actually think that rich people just horde money in their bank accounts?

Rich people reinvest their money. Most often by investing in businesses, or hiring employees, or investments in capital improvements or capital projects. They expect to see a return on their investments just as all people would expect to see a return on their investments.

Your thinking is so far from the truth, its actually comical. What do you think happens when a rich person hires another person to work for them / their company or companies? That person gets a job, they improve their lives, they spend that money on things in the economy, which in turn pays the salaries of other people in the economy.

Do you still need economics 101, or do you get it now?

[Kolbjorn]

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?

Fair isn't necessarily important. Velocity of money is.

Flat tax is great if your velocity of money is 1, and you have no way to increase it.

But that would be a pretty terrible economy. To grow an economy, you want more money in the hands of people that will spend it, not people that will hoard it. That means you want more money in lower income people's hands.

When lower income people get money, they go buy something. Milk instead of water. Twinkies instead of nothing. And so on.

That money goes back to companies that employ middle/lower class workers. Those workers then spend it. Repeat.

Each time that cash transacts, the business owners collect a portion as profits. Since the transactions happen more than once a year, the business actually makes more cash by selling more things than it would had it only sold one thing.


Economic theory isn't about who "deserves" money. You shouldn't care whether a family "deserves" a tax break, or whatever. You should care what they do with it. The GOP's "deserves" fetish is terribly destructive for the economy, because it keeps the dialogue around meaningless emotional factors rather than doing the math.


Summary: progressive tax is better for economic growth, because math > "fairness" emotion.

[Draeth]

A simple illustration for you.

A 90% tax rate would have a person making $15k a year (a literal starvation wage already) net $1.5k. That's barely over $100 a month, not even enough to cover mediocre food, much less anything else.

The same 90% tax rate reduces someone making a billion dollars a year ($1,000,000,000) to netting one hundred million dollars a year ($100,000,000). That's still a thousand times more money than you need to live a very comfortable life.

The only reasonable metric we have to determine fairness is how a tax effects the quality of life of the taxed. A flat tax is inherently unfair.

[Z-Man]

Firefighters, soldiers, and prison guards don't have a better life, they RISK their lives to protect people from harm.

When we reach 100% unemployment, those professions will the ones the rich will be paying to protect their stuff. Everyone else dies.

[Total Crica]

When we reach 100% unemployment, those professions will the ones the rich will be paying to protect their stuff. Everyone else dies.

They are already being paid to protect the rich. Or did you think the poor right now are being protected EXACTLY the same as the rich are being protected?

[Ivanstone]

Can I ask you a real honest question? Do you actually think that rich people just horde money in their bank accounts?

Yes. That's pretty much what a substantial amount of money is used for.
http://business.financialpost.com/ne...-them-anything

PS Trickle down economics doesn't work.

[Thepersona]

Can I ask you a real honest question? Do you actually think that rich people just horde money in their bank accounts?

Rich people reinvest their money. Most often by investing in businesses, or hiring employees, or investments in capital improvements or capital projects. They expect to see a return on their investments just as all people would expect to see a return on their investments.

Your thinking is so far from the truth, its actually comical. What do you think happens when a rich person hires another person to work for them / their company or companies? That person gets a job, they improve their lives, they spend that money on things in the economy, which in turn pays the salaries of other people in the economy.

Do you still need economics 101, or do you get it now?

It's a proven fact that rich people hoard a part of their money into their accounts. because again, the richer you are, the less money (as a percentage) you need to live your life. And again, they do not invest all of their earnings (that's why trickle down doesnt work, never has worked and will never work)., because the economy works based on demand, not on supply. in fact, demand is pretty much inelastic on the short term.

you seem to not uderstand that, and that's a macro 101 course in college

[Total Crica]

rich people hoard a part of their money into their accounts because...

...they don't want to work all their lives and they want their loved ones to have an easier life when they die, so they save some to retire on and to give to their loved ones when they die.

[Z-Man]

They are already being paid to protect the rich. Or did you think the poor right now are being protected EXACTLY the same as the rich are being protected?

I was responding to the comment that the goal should be full unemployment no plan for what the 99% are going to do for money. The end result of full unemployed is burning cities. At 30% unemployment you get Arab Spring. At 100% unemployment, we all get to play Fallout. You're either rich, or you're manning the walls at the rich guy's house (firefighter or soldier).

[Thepersona]

...they don't want to work all their lives and they want their loved ones to have an easier life when they die, so they save some to retire on and to give to their loved ones when they die.

well, also that. Jaylock assumes that people behave like rational beings. That's horseshit, and most economists know that, and integrate it on their models.

In fact, as i was studying Micro 101, Micro 201 and Macro 101 and 201, my teachers said exactly that, that the models that we're using are based on BIG assumptions that dont work on real life