Forum Post: Why So Much Hate For The Flat Tax?
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 19, 2011, 10:53 p.m. EST by ArrestAllCEOS
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Our current tax code is so complex, it's 80,000 pages long so with so many loopholes. It costs nearly half a trillion just to enforce it and it is unfair for small businesses.
A flat tax would eliminate those costs, and create a fair playing field for all. No loopholes. Everyone pays the same rate.
Lets say 9%
A business makes $100,000 profit, it pays $9,000 Another business makes $20,000,000 profit it pays $1,800,000
Whats wrong with that?
Half this country doesn't pay taxes cause they dont' make enough money. Flat tax would raise their taxes.
Personal income taxes (the flat tax) and corporate taxes (what a business pays) are two different things.
because flat tax goes with the idea of spending more to keep the economy stable. that shit doesnt make sense! they the think the more in debt we are, the better we will be. what a fucking joke. RON PAUL 2012
Yes a flat tax will have the poorest among us paying taxes. Which points out one of the major issues of OWS. Income inequality. If we had an actual livable minimum wage - $10 p/h, and supported collective bargaining (this does not have to mean joining an existing national union - any group of employees can form there own collective to address their needs to any employer) workers would begin to see a rise in their living standards, then the tax rate even for the poorest would be acceptable. Everyone uses the services, everyone needs to pay taxes.
Because proportionally with a flat tax, only the most wealthy individuals recieve a break under that system. You can't just arbitrarily tax people without justification. You tax a billionaire 9%, it doesn't affect him as much as taxing someone who makes 30k per year. The tax structure needs to be restructured, but the income tax is such an arbitrary tax and is not based on anything real.
We should be talking about phasing out the income tax and replacing it with a land tax. Land is the source of all wealth in the world, without land there would be nothing. A land tax is based on something physical and not someone's idea. Best of all, this type of tax structure is un-avoidable, cheap to collect, and non- invasive. It doesn't change the natural state of the economy, but rather extracts the surplus created by the division of labor. This surplus will then be reallocated for public use. Now for the people who are all itching to scream Socialism or some similar bullshit, hold that thought because this is not a centrally planned economy. It's a free-market economy which allows people to gain profits from their labor and capital. What it doesn't allow is people to gain private profits from land. Since nobody has ever created a piece of land from their labor or capital, any value the land has goes to everyone. Under this system you will only be rewarded for what you contributed to society, not from extracting all of the rents that were created by the community in the first place. Everyone however will benefit directly from these rents, even the wealthy. The productivity of any nation is only limited by their technological capabilities. As societies become more advanced, more wealth will be created from land with less human labor. This means there is in theory, an infinite amount of wealth to be extracted from land and to be redistributed to everyone.
The theory of economic rent has been around for some time, but land taxation has seldom been implemented throughout history. It is well known that the factors of production are composed of land, labor and capital. Land, in the economic sense, can be explained as anything with a productive capacity that has not been created by men or women, but has value created by the community. Labor is any human energy spent , whether by the mind or through brute force, that contributes to a means of production. Capital is mainly what is spent from savings for future production. Under the current system, mainly labor and capital are taxed, while the landed elite make out like bandits with the rents that are created by the community! It is no surprise that civilizations have suffered from vast inequalities since the founding of the first governments.
What we need to fight for is a redistribution of these economic rents for the sake of the people, while at the same time reducing the tax rates on labor and capital. These rents from land are the source of all wealth and are presently held by a small number of wealthy people who will speculate and slow there productive capacity in order to increase profits.
This demand goes out to the people of OWS! If there is one thing we need to change in order to promote equality, environmental protection and job creation through increased productive capacity, this is the solution we need. Please read about economic rent and land taxation in order to fully grasp the concept.
This is something proven in theory and not based on anyone's personal opinion or ideology. While we are divided on many things, it's time to come together with some real demands to benefit the majority of unrepresented individuals of the world. Lets show the top 1% that we know where their unearned wealth is coming from and that we know exactly what is needed in order to bring them back to the real world!
did you know a business can not deduct wages paid as an expense
therefore they will pay 9% on wages.
hmmmm
I think i will not hire anyone and out source
because the money collected from people
through property ownership and monopolies
is slanted
Because of many, many, reasons:
I give credit to the flat-taxers and/or the Herman Cains who at least try to come up with something new. As far as Cain is concerned, if he changes his plan to include a basic salary level that gets a "deduction", and closes the loop-hole on how capital gains can be manipulated by self-employed individuals, he might have something there.
Cain's plan has no tax on capital gains. Hip Hip Ho-ray for the rich .. then win again.
The biggest tax the working poor pay are the flat taxes.
I define the working poor as anyone who earns 60,000 a year or less.
60,000 sounds like a decent salary but it has the same buying power as minimum wage did in the 60's. $1.35 an hour bought you 13 gallons of gas or 6 cartons of cigarettes or enough to take your family out to a restaurant and feed you..your wife and 2 kids.
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Its not fair because INCOME is not the same as DISPOSABLE INCOME
Everyone pays 9% of their disposable income would be fair. A flat tax on income is unfair because its a 100% tax on a poor person's disposable income, and a 0.001% tax on a wealthy person's disposable income.
Of course coming up with a fair and reasonable definition of disposable income would be difficult. But its not impossible.
The flat tax is a tax on the poor. The Poor spend 100% of what they earn or receive in benefits.
Warren Buffet currently pays 17% income tax rate .. under Cain 9% plan his tax rate would drop to 1%.
Figure it out your self. Take the total on page one of your tax return. multiply by 9%. and compare to your final tax bill.
Now add another 9% to your living expenses food , gas..cloths
I like the flat tax it harder to evade but it will never see the light of day in congress. Lobbyist will Swiss cheese it with loopholes and tax regulatory capture will result.
I like the flat tax idea - we also should take welfare out of the tax code
Because it still does not solve the inequality of wealth in our country.
Getting rid of the wealthy don't help. I wish we could create more, the more wealthy people the better. The problem is too few hold the wealth and it isn't spread out. The more rich people there are means more companies for people to work at. The wealthy don't just hate us they hate each other more. They hate competition. And they are weeding it out right now, they are creating monopolies at our expense.
Yes, we need an economy in which everyone can afford 100 servants or even 1000 servants per person! YES!!
well said
It isn't about ending wealth it's about not bailing out the wealthy. A flat tax is giving bigger hand outs to the wealthy. The wealthy create the high tax rates and want the middle and lower taxes to pay them.If the wealthy don't want roads to ship there goods don't repair them. If they don't want a military to influence global instability to increase oil profits don't create such a large DOD and keep them at war. If they want a crappy education system and no qualified workers don't fund schools. ( ok they actually did this one) the wealthy create all the govt policies and want you to pay for them. Get rid of loopholes yes but keep a progressive tax system. Make the wealthy pay taxes. If they are paying to much make less money. Wah.
Everyone says you are a troll, arrestallceos.
Everyone voted for Obama too
" If you expect them both to pay the same "FLAT" tax, the lower income person is forced to do without essentials while the higher income person is only forced to forfeit some income above and beyond that required for their considerably more comfortable life."
A flat rate is fine as long as the rate is tied to level of income and not the same across the board. A progressive rate not brackets of income.
I think the primary goal of this movement is not equality, fairness or any of those noble pursuits. It is to get rid of the rich. It's a common theme running through theses posts. Who are the rich? They are all greedy people who exploit poor hardworking people. Every single one of them. Until you put a name on them and then the protesters say " well, he's ok, it's the others" . Until you realise that the rich and the poor are both people, looking out for themselves and their families, you can never make progress. If wealth equals greed, then poverty equals laziness.
No, this is not at all what most people think. And most people do indeed believe this is about inequality and injustice.
I think it makes perfect sense but some of these people have found a way that is unfair to the poor. You just can't win.
How can any tax code be fair if people can't understand it?
It's regressive. Poor and middle-class folks spend a far, far greater percentage of their income on essentials (e.g., food, housing, clothing, utilities, etc.) than the super-rich. A flat tax would make folks at the bottom and middle pay a far higher effective tax rate than those at the top.
Besides, much of the appeal of the flat tax is its simplicity. But if simplicity is the goal, there is no reason why we can't simply eliminate all loopholes and leave the tax rates as they currently are. No tricks or traps, just a very easy calculation each year.
Makes sense to me. Can't please everyone
people are afraid of it because the low wage issue. you would either have to pay employees a living wage enough to cover it or give a credit thereby defeating the point.
Do you really need to ask? More from the lower income, less from the wealty.
How is it more from anyone if it's flat?
Sure you're not confusing a flat tax with a VAT or consumption tax?
Is that you Herman?