thewb

IRSistherootofallevil

asherchang

(Well, sure, at the moment a lot of the money is coming from foreigners, but never mind that for now.)

When poor people have to pay more tax - and they really do have to pay more tax, unlike rich people who can afford good accountants - more of them will be pushed out of (taxed) employment and/or below the poverty line, into penury and misery. That means more cash and barter your tax won't touch, more welfare payments, more crime, more homelessness, more people with nothing to lose.

Actually, name one thing about society that you don't like, and it's likely that regressive taxation that increases the number of poor people will make it worse.

Wikipedia has an excellent page about flat taxes.

Note also that the USA's taxation as a proportion of GDP puts it 23rd out of 25 OECD countries. The only countries in the OECD with lower taxes are South Korea and Mexico.

This causes people like me, who live in higher-ranked countries and are glad to do so, to wonder what the hell you Americans are complaining about.

Daniel Rutter

Anywho, economics is far to vast a topic to be simplified and argued about, but we all seem to be trying to do thusly. I heard a story about a Swedish businessman, who was rich, and it's hard to get or stay rich in some of those scandinavian countries. But after he was well into his cups, and had railed against all the evil taxes he has to pay, he confessed something to the effect of: "even if I were the poorest guy in my country, I'd have at the very least, a roof over my head, and food in my belly." But this isn't to say that the "nanny state" is the way to go, but there are just so many injustices that happen every day. People being bred into stupidity, and kept penned up like sheep in ghettos. The myth of the "welfare queen" shitting out babies to get more government dole, (the vast majority of welfare recipients are single, white, mothers, put there because actual sex education is a "sin"). And the ridiculous assumption that people make that you can actually survive on welfare. There was a study done of welfare recipients, and they all supplemented their incomes with boyfriends or under the table jobs. There was one lady in the study, who was able to pay for everything with only welfare money. All her furniture was out of dumpsters, she skipped two meals a day to feed her children, shopped only at thrift stores, mended everything. Needless wars, mindless entertainment, and "Empty Causes" (excellent song by Bad Religion) to keep us all distracted from the perpetual problems that the arseholes in positions of undeserved, unearned power use to reap ever-increasing profits to satiate their greed.

Flat taxes shift the lion's share of the tax burden onto the middle class, which has nearly disappeared in this country. Who then, will get to pay and pay and pay for all the pork-barrel spending and congressional drug addicts' re-election campaigns (the money for congressional campaigns comes from wealthy donors, not the public, but, the wealthy make their donation monies off the backs of the poor). The poor, who have been sold into an invisible contract of slavery will end up stuck with the bill, too stupid to realize they are slaves. And THIS is fair?

Then, coming soon, we get to experience the microwaving of peaceful protest crowds, and tazing of 4 year old little girls.

Wow, this turned into a little rant. Oh well, "Remember, a paranoid is merely someone in possession of all the facts." - Spider Jerusalem

SexCpotatoes

Me, I'm hoping America returns to the our original constitutional roots... friends, I think we are due to a trip to Boston Harbor and prepare to hurl some tea -- among other things.

webwbr

Paying the same taxes on the same amounts but paying more on the higher earnings seems pretty fair to me--it recognizes that life has some fixed costs. I HAVE to spend the same amount of money on certain items (food, shelter, medicine) as someone making half of what I do. So it's a lot easier to lose 30 cents from my 100,000th dollar than it is to lose 20 cents from that 30,000th dollar.

Guy_Incognito82

loquaciousmusic

If everyone paid the same percentage, the rich would still be paying more taxes than the poor...and in that way, we wouldn't be punishing people for earning more than a median wage. Unless, that is, you enjoy being poor sexCpotatoes...and want others to be poor as well.

crayonshinobi

SexCpotatoes

Triteon

An interesting note for your "capital gains" tax as well, there is no upper limit to the gains you must report for taxation, but they limit the deduction you can take from loss to $5k/year. So they punish you for profiting on a risk, and don't reward you for losing either. I always thought that was rather underhanded.

crayonshinobi

acambras

I'll also note that they didn't bother ranking DC. Sure it has an entry, but no rank (it should be 3, pushing everything down one).

Electoral College Dropout

karmaghost

mac-phisto

The above is talking about previous versions of the calculation, but I don't think they've stopped lying in the meantime.

As is usual for right-wing tax complainers for whom the only possible answer to the question of how much money you need to be happy is "More!", the Tax Foundation's calculations are strongly biased in favour of the wealthy. The "average Americans" they talk about are not average at all. People with incomes closer to the median pay less of that income in tax.

The Tax Foundation engages in some further straight-out lying when, for instance, they include capital gains taxes in their debit figures (you know, the appreciation of the large stock portfolio and multiple investment properties that all average Americans apparently own), but fail to include the appreciation which triggers those taxes in their credit figures. Apparently average Americans take the money their investments make and burn it.

To quote another commentator: "Please do not report this nonsense without noting the profound lack of logic and consistency inherent in it".

Daniel Rutter