All taxpayers should get a fixed deduction equaling whatever the is a survivable wage (somewhere between 12 and 20 thousand). What’s left over is taxed at a fixed rate of the same percent for everyone. Then, everyone would have a stake in how the government spends the money.
You can’t be serious. That would only result in endless lobbying to set the “poverty level deduction” higher and higher to exclude and thereby buy the votes of more and more people. Even if it stayed at the current poverty level, that is still 14% of the populace that get a free ride and pay no taxes. Why should anyone be left out of their civic obligations ?
I’d rather EVERYONE pay a flat 10%, even the minimum wage worker, even if that meant the minimum wage needed to be raised to compensate and leave them the same purchasing power. Lowering employers’ tax rate from 35% to 10% should more han compensate them for the higher wage they have to pay to get those low-wage workers back on the tax rolls.