Poll: Flat Tax.

[ianuam]

I think it's a pretty good idea. Would reduce the claims of being unfair to the successful by having scaling tax rates, thereby encouraging people to work harder in order to raise their salary without worrying about the government taking a sizeable chunk at the end of the year. All in all, it seems.. fair to both ends of the economic spectrum.

 

[Twilight_guy]

I think it's a pretty good idea. Would reduce the claims of being unfair to the successful by having scaling tax rates, thereby encouraging people to work harder in order to raise their salary without worrying about the government taking a sizeable chunk at the end of the year. All in all, it seems.. fair to both ends of the economic spectrum.

(see my above post)
The a flat tax is a regressive tax. The poor need there money more then the rich. A flax tax is class-blind and thus hurts the poor more then the rich.

Also, no matter how we're taxed, we're still taxed. The government is going to pull out a good chunk either way. Changing how the chunk is set up does not really encourage anyone to work harder.

I'm not sure where you some of you are getting your figures on how high a flat tax would have to be in order to sustain government spending. Your average middle class United States American provides the majority of the U.S.'s money. The trouble is less in which tax system you use ( Flat, Progressive, Fair ) and more getting everyone paying their taxes. The U.S. upper class has too many ways to escape their taxes. They've spent the last 10-20 years exploiting every loop hole in the current tax system, and are now asking to be bailed with tax money they have never contributed to.

Don't you think the rich are going to find a way to weasel out of it either way. They have the money to find loopholes (or to influence government to make loopholes). Changing tax systems would just give them a new puzzle to solve and then avoid taxes.

 

[CIA]

A flat tax rate is horribly unfair to the poor and working class. I think that the graduated income tax we have now is a better idea because it gets those rich bugger's money. I agree that sales tax is stupid. It is very annoying to walk into a store and have to do math when I'm not in school.

 

[ianuam]

Replying to twilight_guy, not quoting to avoid massive wall of text. Well, the thing is the difference in tax rates could be said to breed discontent. The rich can feel bad about how little tax the poor are paying (yes, i understand this is morally dubious) and the poor can feel bad about how the government will remove much of the wealth from increased wages. With a flat tax rate there's none of that. A proportion of your income will always be taxed at the same rate, regardless of income. Perhaps even social mobility will increase, though i concede this is a tenuous claim.

Oh, and for the record i live in a relatively deprived area, so i'm not a rich person looking down upon the proletariat.