US Politics - 2020 Presidential Election - GOP v Dem cage fight (ENTER AT YOUR PERIL)

[Da Geezer]

The fundamental problem with a "Flat Tax" is that it winds up hitting lower-income people and families disproportionately harder than the wealthy.

https://itep.org/the-pitfalls-of-flat-income-taxes/

Basically, 16% to someone making 50k is going to impact them a lot harder than 16% of someone making 500k; and the instant you start making exceptions, you no longer have a flat fax, you have a graduated one with a lower ceiling than before. Our wealthiest citizens have pretty resoundingly demonstrated that they aren't using lower taxes to "create jobs" or "be more charitable." They're using it to hoard wealth that they will never spend, and nothing more.

Not to put too fine a point of it, but the top 1% of income earners pay 42% of FIT, and the bottom 90% pay 37%. The top 1% earn about 20% of the income. We already have a very graduated tax system. Even a graduated flat tax would be a tax cut for the rich. That would offend progressives.

In the Carter years, I was paying in the top bracket of 70% and 4.6% to the State of Michigan. Plus property tax, plus a 4% sales tax. What you Progs here don't consider is that a 75-85% tax rate discourages people who make money from making things. Why gamble on new innovations and risky business endeavors when you only get to keep 20%?

For example, in about 1978, Carter passed a bill that was to jump-start the economy by giving a double-declining balance 5-year depreciation on machinery used in income production. A friend and I each bought a $ 100,000 bulldozer. We each stored the dozer and began writing them off. First-year was 100k times 20% times two or $ 40,000. The second year was 25%(one-fourth of the four years left) times two of 60,000 = $ 30,000.

So, after two years, we had written down 70,000 which at a 70% marginal rate gave us each $ 49,000 in cash in our pocket in tax savings

In year three we sold the dozers to each other for $ 100,000. We had a cost basis at that time of $ 30,000 so our "profit" was $ 70,000 at a capital gains rate of 28% or $ 19,600. So the net was $ 49,000 in actual cash savings less the $ 19,600 was $ 29,400 in two years. FOR DOING NOTHING. And we still had the dozers in the barn (and they had undoubtedly increased in value due to the 12% inflation).

High tax rates create perverse incentives. Decisions are made with the tax code in mind rather than on economic merit. In my example, if you could use the bulldozer to create $ 100,000 actual income in two years, you would only keep $ 30,000, roughly the same as you could make doing nothing.

High taxes misallocate capital.

[Da Geezer]

Yep. I would like to see a graduated flat rate based on income. Higher earners pay a higher percent. Get rid of all of the loopholes and everyone pays based on all income

You make 100K? You pay XX%

You make 500K? You pay XX%

OK, now fill in the blanks What rate do you consider enough?

What rate would you charge the highest earners in a progressive system.

[wcfwtf]

The United States is all about money/business.
Humans are a commodity that is used to create wealth for business owners and the Gov.
A flat tax will kill the accounting tax business.
there would be more harm done to economy then good.
Same reason the government doesn’t promote healthy diets and food. That would create great harm to the business of health care.
Better to just let have Americans have the freedom to figure out things for themselves then actually do something for the greater good.

[CGVT]

OK, now fill in the blanks What rate do you consider enough?

What rate would you charge the highest earners in a progressive system.

I don't know for sure. But a graduated system as we have now. Pay the lower % until the threshold and then the higher % in the next bracket

Probably $0 for under 50k

Maybe 50-100k 10%

100-500k 15%

Over 500 30%

So someone who made 200k would pay 20k in tax and someone who made 550k would pay 80k

Of course this is just spitballing as I don't know the real number, but you get the gist of it

[dpatnod]

[foxhopper]

They got him this time! lol

[Da Geezer]

I don't know for sure. But a graduated system as we have now. Pay the lower % until the threshold and then the higher % in the next bracket

Probably $0 for under 50k

Maybe 50-100k 10%

100-500k 15%

Over 500 30%

So someone who made 200k would pay 20k in tax and someone who made 550k would pay 80k

Of course this is just spitballing as I don't know the real number, but you get the gist of it

A 2/3 tax cut! Who can be against that? If you earned $ 550,000, then your effective rate would be 14.5%.

According to the OECD, the average taxpayer pays 28.4% for a single worker.

You should run for office CGVT.

What this actually shows is that Progs have zero understanding of the amount of income tax working people pay. That is because all the non-working welfare recipients need to be supported by the working folks.
______________________________

Fun fact:

Yale University and Standford University have more administrators than undergraduates. Specifically, Stanford has 15,750 administrators, 2,288 faculty members, and 16, 937 students.

[Whitley]

A 2/3 tax cut! Who can be against that? If you earned $ 550,000, then your effective rate would be 14.5%.

According to the OECD, the average taxpayer pays 28.4% for a single worker.

You should run for office CGVT.

What this actually shows is that Progs have zero understanding of the amount of income tax working people pay. That is because all the non-working welfare recipients need to be supported by the working folks.
______________________________

Fun fact:

Yale University and Standford University have more administrators than undergraduates. Specifically, Stanford has 15,750 administrators, 2,288 faculty members, and 16, 937 students.

Or you could get rid of corporate welfare. I imagine there are trillions in that pile of tax loopholes/credits
You can go into the 880-900 billion dollar DOD budget and say since you have failed your last 5 audits and in the last one can't account for 59% of it in the last one. We are going to claw back 30% (274-300 billion using last year DOD budget).

On Social Security, you rip the cap off. And in exchange for ripping the cap off you put in writing that will only be used for social security and Medicare.

[CGVT]

A 2/3 tax cut! Who can be against that? If you earned $ 550,000, then your effective rate would be 14.5%.

According to the OECD, the average taxpayer pays 28.4% for a single worker.

You should run for office CGVT.

What this actually shows is that Progs have zero understanding of the amount of income tax working people pay. That is because all the non-working welfare recipients need to be supported by the working folks.
______________________________

Fun fact:

Yale University and Standford University have more administrators than undergraduates. Specifically, Stanford has 15,750 administrators, 2,288 faculty members, and 16, 937 students.

Fun fact:

Stanford and Yale are private universities. Who gives a shit how many administrators they have and how that is relevant to anything


I guess I need to raise the rate on the fuckers that make over 500K, don't I? Maybe raise it to 50%? Probably not, though, because if you tax All income the amount of money coming in will go up considerably.

BTW, Let's look at the median. It is a much better indicator of tax burden. I looked it up and probably got my info from the same article that you used (because you didn't have a clue what the average was, you pompous prick)


'Median' Might Be a Better Term


It might be easier to understand the median tax burden of American taxpayers instead. The median is the number that falls in the middle of a data set. Theoretically, half of all taxpayers would pay less than a median figure, and half would pay more.

The top 50% of taxpayers paid 97.1% of all federal income taxes in 2018, the last tax year for which comprehensive and vetted statistics are available, according to the Tax Foundation. As a result, the bottom 50% paid just 2.9%.


Based on these and other figures, the Tax Foundation derives an average tax rate of 14.6% for the top 50% of taxpayers, 3.4% for the bottom 50%, and an average of 13.3% overall.

And...Go fuck yourself. You are a fucking asshole.

I know what my rate was last year because I worked my entire life and am now retired. My wife has worked her entire life. We have paid taxes our entire fucking lives. I know what my tax rate was last year. I would not get a tax cut. Maybe you would, but you wouldn't be able to make money off of your bulldozer scheme and other bullshit loopholes.

Have I told you to go fuck yourself yet? If not...

Go fuck yourself.

[Sanders Fan]

I never understood why politicians demonize corporations for not paying their “fair share” when they are the ones who write up the thousands of pages of tax code loopholes.

The first thing I would do is to remove the Social Security max earnings cap. The more you make, the more you pay, with no limit.

[Fraquar]

I never understood why politicians demonize corporations for not paying their “fair share” when they are the ones who write up the thousands of pages of tax code loopholes.

The first thing I would do is to remove the Social Security max earnings cap. The more you make, the more you pay, with no limit.

Get rid of the whole "class" structured tax code (with a gazillion write offs) and go to a flat tax.
Everyone owes X% of their income. Figure out what that % is and be done with it already.
Make 6 Billion or 30,000 - you pay the same percentage.

Done. The only difference is the guy making $30,000 is probably going to need Food Stamps - the guy making 6 Billion shouldn't have issues keeping his kids (or his 5 ex's) fed.....
Though they may need to make exceptions to some of these Multi-Million dollar athletes that by their own words struggle to keep food on the table....

[Da Geezer]

I never understood why politicians demonize corporations for not paying their “fair share” when they are the ones who write up the thousands of pages of tax code loopholes.

The first thing I would do is to remove the Social Security max earnings cap. The more you make, the more you pay, with no limit.

The 2.9% Medicare tax is already charged on the entire income. So there is precedent for your proposal.

[Da Geezer]

Fun fact:

Stanford and Yale are private universities. Who gives a shit how many administrators they have and how that is relevant to anything


I guess I need to raise the rate on the fuckers that make over 500K, don't I? Maybe raise it to 50%? Probably not, though, because if you tax All income the amount of money coming in will go up considerably.

BTW, Let's look at the median. It is a much better indicator of tax burden. I looked it up and probably got my info from the same article that you used (because you didn't have a clue what the average was, you pompous prick)


'Median' Might Be a Better Term


It might be easier to understand the median tax burden of American taxpayers instead. The median is the number that falls in the middle of a data set. Theoretically, half of all taxpayers would pay less than a median figure, and half would pay more.

The top 50% of taxpayers paid 97.1% of all federal income taxes in 2018, the last tax year for which comprehensive and vetted statistics are available, according to the Tax Foundation. As a result, the bottom 50% paid just 2.9%.


Based on these and other figures, the Tax Foundation derives an average tax rate of 14.6% for the top 50% of taxpayers, 3.4% for the bottom 50%, and an average of 13.3% overall.

And...Go fuck yourself. You are a fucking asshole.

I know what my rate was last year because I worked my entire life and am now retired. My wife has worked her entire life. We have paid taxes our entire fucking lives. I know what my tax rate was last year. I would not get a tax cut. Maybe you would, but you wouldn't be able to make money off of your bulldozer scheme and other bullshit loopholes.

Have I told you to go fuck yourself yet? If not...

Go fuck yourself.

My goodness, you are wrathy today! Prunes might help.

These are the Tax Foundation's latest reports on income taxation. Not radically different from the ones you cite.

https://taxfoundation.org/publicatio...20above%202019.

Rather than address my critique of your income tax rate proposal, you want to talk about median v average. Use whichever you want. You proposed a 2/3 cut in income taxes, and that showed how little you know about the federal tax code (among many other things).

As someone who has been on the government payroll most of his life, I can see why you want working folks to pay into the government so you can sit on your butt. You have lots of company since over 50% of the country is on the government dole in some form, and even more were on the dole in 2020, the year of your statistics.

As to administration and staff at colleges and universities, U of M Ann Arbor has a total administration, staff, and faculty of 44,200 in the most recent report. That is from Wikipedia.

I'm just saying that there are far too many chiefs and not enough Indians in almost all universities.

What this country really needs is to cut by 1/3 those who are paid by the government. That includes all the various forms of welfare, but also those who "work" for the government as social workers and administrators in the sundry programs the government provides.

[Whitley]

I never understood why politicians demonize corporations for not paying their “fair share” when they are the ones who write up the thousands of pages of tax code loopholes.

The first thing I would do is to remove the Social Security max earnings cap. The more you make, the more you pay, with no limit.

I would add that I would like a law that makes that money collected for social security only be used for SS.

[Futureshock]