Posted on 10/23/2021 5:03:14 PM PDT by Kevmo
For several years I have advocated a Shallow Exponent Flat Tax. Instead of 4 or 5 tiers, there would be only ONE tier that we all face. But the more money you make, your burden goes up slightly higher than as a flat percentage.
The tax would look something like: Tax = 10% X {[Income]^1.05}
The exponent could be set by congress every 10 years or during wartime. The flat exponent perhaps should be on a longer timeframe for revisiting, because 10% is very easy to do in your head.
As you go up higher in income, your tax burden goes up as well. This way the rich "pay their fair share" while not having to face a bracket bunching.
One single tier. Flat tax. And yet, still progressive.
If you use the tax tables you get some effects from their $50 steps so a $1 increase in pay can result in a $12 increase in tax.
***So that kinda verifies what I was saying...
Is there an online excel spreadsheet we could post this on? We could tweak the exponent and the flat tax coefficient & post the results.
If you have a google account, you can go to sheets.google.com
I tried tweaking both varibles and didn’t get a satisfactory result. If you drop the rate to 5% it looks better on the poor, but it doesn’t tax the high earners enough. If you raise the exponent, it goes back up on the poor.
Think you will need to tweak the formula.
I tweaked them and found that 2.4 for the flat tax coefficient and 1.13 for the exponent was what generated the fairest curve.
I’m not sure this link is gonna work:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XeKc_errT2xy_EvwIkSHic5TVwhI4kwkU0fom9WHZFo/edit#gid=0
Said I need access. You probably have to turn the share feature on.
But I wouldn’t post something google to a public forum. Currently anyone can share stuff to your google drive unless you have individually blocked that person. I’ve got one google account that regularly has people sharing pornographic stuff on it.
They got my google email from dating sites. The shared file doesn’t get saved on your google drive, but a link to it does. And when you got to find something legitimate that someone shared with you it all pops up.
Agree
Fine, but no exponent. The Feral (sic) government does not need more money to waste.
Taxing income is a lot more stable than taxing consumption. Consumption is subject to waves of consumer sentiment and herd mentality. Income is to but to a much lesser extent.
In an economic downturn, the very time you might need some government intervention, government would be seeing a much sharper reduction in it's revenues.
I'm in favor of raising import taxes and cutting income taxes. That taxes consumption but only on foreign made goods, encouraging production and income in the US.
But I wouldn't cut the income tax completely out for stability reasons.
In particular my aim was to make 10% marginal rate to be crossing over the curve at the median income, which is about $40k.
All income taxes are inherently evil because it’s camouflage for indentured servitude. The government telling you that they own the product of your services for a certain period of time.
And an income tax is inherently regressive because the only way to reduce your indebtedness is to earn less. If you take on more work because you’ve fallen behind, that also increases your tax burden.
A graduated national sales or consumption tax would be far fairer because that would allow you to bridge the lean times by curtailing your purchasing and, if necessary, taking on more work without also taking on more tax indebtedness.
The wealthy limit their income tax indebtedness by investing in instruments that the IRS doesn’t regard as income-producing. And, in truth, this seeming “loophole” is essential to a capitalist economy. It won’t work without the venture capitalists. There’s no “trickle-down” if the people at the top turn off the tap.
But there’s no point being wealthy if you don’t surround yourself with the trappings of luxury. The wealthy will always buy Gucci automobiles and luxurious homes. So get the burden off the low earners and shift it to the wealthy by eliminating the income tax and replacing it with a graduated sales tax with no tax on the essentials (food, medicine, utilities, etc) or on modestly-priced articles of clothing and low-end automobiles.
or just say everyone’s tax bill has to sky rocket, but they need to bake in paying down the debt....yeah, everyone will be scream...but healthy
I’d suggest tweaking your idea to reduce every department’s spending until the total spending is no more than what was taken in the previous year, or the average of the previous three years, or something like that.
Otherwise, year after year we might end up with budget-makers pretending to be surprised that actual tax revenues fell short of the projections they made when setting the budget.
That would be a separate concept. I like it, but it’s separate and needs to stand on its own merits.
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