Obama offers plan to destroy all economic growth...

[RevDisk]

I KNEW there was a reason I enjoy fine cigars and 18 y/o Scotch Whiskey.  I'm in the top echelon of society despite driving an econobox and living in a crackerbox.

Only for tax purposes, my dear Sindawe, only for tax purposes. 

I do find it ironic that the only time I could legally smoke Cubans in my lifetime was when the government was paying me to blow things up in Europe.  Something about it just makes me giggle.   I do miss my ol Irish and Norwegian/Finnish/Swedish connection for the good booze.  Sigh...  20 euros for a large bottle of 21 y/o Glenfiddich.  15EUR for 3L of Bacardi

[wooderson]

Get over it and deal with reality: The folks who make the money in this country pay the cost to keep Leviathan rolling.  The poor just don't have much worth stealing to make it worthwhile, which is why the lower 50% of income earners pay diddly & squat.  I wish my greatest exposure was just payroll taxes.

Y'all don't seem to grasp the point. The numbers cited are nonsense. That the top 1% pay 39.2727272% of income taxes doesn't sound so awful if they earn 42.8838383% of the income, right? (they don't - it's more like 15% or something - maybe even in the 20% range) That's why the percentage of income earned by each of those divisions is so important - and why the wackjobs who throw the numbers out never bring it.

If you include payroll taxes - again, ~45% of the personal federal tax burden - that waters down the percentages even further, perhaps even to the point where those who earn 30% of total income are paying 30% of personal taxes! But we wouldn't want to explore those numbers to find out if that's true, because it doesn't reinforce the point we wanted to make about the burdens of being upper-middle class (if not upper-class, period).

As I said: a drunk leaning on a lamp-post.

But we don't really need to run those numbers, because of course the progressive income tax levies a greater burden on "the folks who make the money" - that's kinda the concept behind progressive taxation, fellas.

[MechAg94]

You say that like you think progressive taxation is a good thing or something. 

[Paddy]

You say that like you think progressive taxation is a good thing or something. 

It's the next best thing, although light years behind, a national sales tax.  That's the way to go.  Eliminate income tax and disband the IRS.

[RevDisk]

It's the next best thing, although light years behind, a national sales tax.  That's the way to go.  Eliminate income tax and disband the IRS.

Lot of folks think a flat tax would be the best way to go.  Most of the econ geeks I've spoken to say VAT can discourage spending.  Which is good individually, but not so much so across the entire economy.  Ipso facto, it'll significantly drive up prices on everything.  That'll hit a lot of people very hard unless basic necessities were exempted.  (Food, gas, etc)   

Progressive taxes stiffle economic growth and punish the successful.  Regressive taxes push the tax burden onto those that can least afford it. 

Biggest reason I'm distrustful of a NST/VAT is that more than likely, it would not replace income tax.  Oh sure, that'd be the promise.  But more than likely, we'd just end up with both.

[Monkeyleg]

"Biggest reason I'm distrustful of a NST/VAT is that more than likely, it would not replace income tax.  Oh sure, that'd be the promise.  But more than likely, we'd just end up with both."

Touche'.

[Manedwolf]

I thought national sales taxes and VAT taxes also encouraged the black market.

[MechAg94]

The black market is what I would be concerned about.  You already have a little bit of that with the state sales taxes.  Add on another 15 or 20% and you would get a whole lot of it. 

The end result would be the IRS would not be disbanded.  It would switch from handling income taxes and audits to handling sales taxes and auditing of that end.  No way the Congress critters will leave all that tax collection to the states for very long. 

Personally, i thought the flat tax idea was the easiest thing to do and wouldn't require wiping out all the current systems.

[MechAg94]

The best thing to do would be to find a way to eliminate the bulk of the entitlement spending that currently eats up so much of the govt budget.

[Manedwolf]

The end result would be the IRS would not be disbanded.  It would switch from handling income taxes and audits to handling sales taxes and auditing of that end.

Auditors roaming street bazaars and seedy electronics shops looking for backroom blackmarket deals, coupled with a rising industry of refitting and modding older technologies, reselling secondhand gear instead of paying the sales tax on new things. How cyberpunk.

[Brad Johnson]

To tax anything is to discourage it, or to encourage corrupt ways around it.  A VAT or sales tax would be a poison pill for the economy.  You are penalizing the one thing that keeps the economy in motion.

Brad