Although the average federal income tax revenue is 9.9% of all income, and you’d think that means your plan would work, it won’t. Unfortunately, you would have huge deficits this way.
Those paying the lion’s share of income taxes would choose the flat tax because it would drop their effective tax rate by about 5% overall. The 70% of the populace that currently pays less than 10% would continue to file under the existing system and collect the tax credits that make their tax rate effectively zero. For many of them, these credits give them back the little money they contribute to SS/M as well.
What we need is a clean switch to your proposal for everybody, or if that is too “regressive” for people to accept, some other combination of rates like 7% on the first $10K and 11% on all income above that. The key to low rates is simply to make it apply to all income. It is the deductions, exemptions, and credits that reduce the taxable base to such a small figure that we need rates as high as 35% at all.
This seems as good a place as any to ask:
In reading minimum wage threads, I often find people saying that minimum wage was not designed or intended for someone to live on.
In reading tax threads, I often find people saying that nearly half pay no (federal income) taxes, and/or that the bottom half doesn’t pay enough taxes.
So how much, exactly, should someone earning minimum wage pay in taxes? (How much is ‘not enough’ and how much is enough?)