Greenmail: Income Tax, Flat Tax, or, No Tax?

Canada Free Press ^ | 06/22/15 | Gary Hunt

[Sean_Anthony]

Washington, D.C. gets back nearly six times, per capita, what it contributes

For those who believe that the federal government should tax us, either by income tax or a fair tax, or any other direct means of taxation, must understand that doing so only creates socialism among the states (taking from one to give to another), as the following table shows (A more complete table can also be found at Tax Foundation Special Report No. 158, “Federal Tax Burdens and Spending by State).

The table is from 2005 (I haven’t found a newer one, yet), so I would suppose that the only changes, absent minor redistributions of moneys, would be that the numbers have gone up, proportionately, in the last 10 years.

Note that $2,084,247,000,000 was taken in through taxes and that $2,210,184,000,000 was sent back to the states. This results in nearly $126 billion that was added back to the states’ side (to the benefit of the state). This additional money is likely a debt passed on to our posterity. And, this does not account for the many trillions spent by the federal government, each year, to support wars, foreign aid, and the expense of operating the government and its administrative agencies.

[originalbuckeye]

Flat Tax and Balanced Federal Budget........that is all that is needed!

[Dutchboy88]

Please...taxation leads to socialism? Then I suppose the guy doesn’t believe in auto insurance or the military. After all, those are examples of us pooling resources to provide for the damage done to a few.

[taterjay]

I never thought of this before. If the government is going to overspend every year and it never matters, they could do the very same thing with us paying nothing in. What does it matter if the the deficit is 1 trillion or 3 trillion?

[Sergio]

Brilliant insight.

[I want the USA back]

It’s a flat rate tax, not a flat tax. Dumb idea either way.

[RayChuang88]

We need a no-loophole (except for a generous initial earned income exemption) circa 18.75% flat rate tax NOW, then begin the transition to repealing the 16th Amendment to replace the income tax with something like FairTax (H.R. 25/S. 155). There are so many downsides to the current income tax system--especially the US$1 TRILLION per year compliance and economic opportunity cost (as of 2014)--that we need to tax reform a long time ago.