I see what you are saying, but if you are not favoring the lower income group you are favoring the higher income group based on how you decide to collect the tax.
In this VAT scenario a guy earning 30k a year spends most of his earnings just to live. Therefore he is paying $3,000 income tax and on top of that he is paying $4320 for VAT Tax. That is $7320 in taxes which means his taxes are 24% of his income. And at the same time a guy making 100,000 gets hit with the same 10%, so he is out $10,000, but he only spends a portion of his income on things that allow you to live, so lets say he spends the same amount, $27,000, so his Vat tax is also $4320, but the % of his income taken away in taxes is only 14%.
With all due respect, I don't believe those numbers are realistic. Unless you seriously think the typical person making 100k/yr is only going to spend 27k.
I mean, more power to him if he does - this country needs more personal saving. But I have never known anybody in any income bracket who manages to save anywhere near that rate.
You seem to be hung up on the notion that a more productive guy might possibly pay a lesser percentage of his income for taxes. It kinda sounds like you think he should be punished for being both productive and frugal.
After all, he just paid the same taxes as the other guy. Plus the productive guy is almost certainly going to require less government help. There is zero moral authority to making him pay more. The Father of the Constitution, Madison, saw nothing in it to authorize charity at the central level.
And there is zero charity, in the biblical sense, to stealing money from Peter and distributing it to Paul. In the bible 'charity' generally means 'love' which necessarily requires the giving to be voluntary. The opposite of what gov't does.
Certainly I could be wrong, but I sense that your personal stance is dangerously close to the basis for the whole Dem economic platform - which is the sin of envy.
I'm not trying to convince you to be a Cruz voter or to like his specific tax blend. I'm just trying to argue for the objective fairness of consumption taxes -vs- the evil of income taxes which from the beginning were based on inherently subjective envy and wrong-headed, un-American thinking.
Yes, I said un-American.
The primary value of America was always Freedom, not equality of outcomes. The Constitution is designed to protect Freedom FROM democracy which, in essence, is just mob rule where the whim of the 50% + 1 voters can take everything from you.
The Founders did not give us the blight of envy. They studiously constituted our central gov't to avoid it. And avoid it we did for more than half our history. Then the Devil got his nose under the tent a century ago and the size of government, the level of Paul's dependency on Peter's wallet, and national debt have ALL exploded while we forever now argue about fairness - which can NEVER be agreed upon when it is subjective.
If I'm not making any headway on the point of true fairness -vs- vague and impossible to quench envy, then at least consider what the Founders thought in the straight practical sense. Particularly Hamilton in The Federalist Papers. And Adam Smith before that.
Old Alexander famously made the point that consumption based taxation would be a 'barrier' to unsustainable government growth. For the very logical reason that as the consumption tax rate goes up consumption is discouraged. When consumption is discouraged then less revenue comes in for them to spend.
Or... think of it this way using your own example: say that guy making 30k/yr works his way up to making 40k/yr. With an emphasis on consumption based taxes instead of income stealing taxes, this guy is now in more control of his own financial destiny. He could decide to continue consuming at his prior rate and pay zero addition sales tax allowing him to save his way into financial security much, much easier than with the punishing and productivity-discouraging progressive income taxes.
Income taxes are inherently bad.
Progressive income taxes are immoral and impractical.
Love him or hate him, Cruz has the only plan which starts us back on the road to America's primary value: Freedom!