Ever heard of it? I heard Mick Huckabee recently say, that, if elected President, he'd do everything within his power to have it implemented. As I understand, it's a flat usage tax....thus, effectively eliminating the IRS. Sounds too good to be true, IMO, though.
I'd love it, personally. Doing taxes sucks ass, I just pay someone a few hundy to do mine for me but its lame having to figure all these stupid expenses and crap out. IRS is so useless, not even the head of the IRS can do his taxes right.
The problem with this "flat tax" is that the difficult part is figuring out the taxable income, not the different tax rates used...if you don't do anything about the calculation of taxable income it is exactly the same difficulty. I'm more a fan of getting rid of most if not all of the activist tax code so it's a lot simpler to figure out the taxable income and less liable to be abused. Often tax incentives don't actually achieve their desired impact, people just manipulate the system to try and qualify for the tax break... Also, if I remember the calc's from the Steve Forbes flat tax proposal, it would raise the majority of Americans taxes, while lowering taxes on the richest (as you'd expect in a plan championed by a billionaire)
I don't think most people would really notice. They should just tax everyone the same rate, and you just live with that paycheck. no need for complicated write offs and crap like that. Fuck the Schedule C! (whatever the hell that is).
Lots of upside, but some really awful indirect consequences. I am, however, strongly in favor of a complete redesign of our tax code. I make a pretty decent living, but because I can make some deductions others can't, I'll pay less in taxes this year than my assistant.
The flat tax deals with the percentage they use (the charts at the back that tell you what you owe). Just changing to a flat tax would still make you go through all the instructions, but the chart you look at in the end would be slightly different. People arguing for only this change are misleading you if they tell you that by itself will make your taxes easier. Essentially they are trying to push through a high income tax cut. However, if they are talking about real tax code overhaul, that could make it simpler...though so many in power have vested interests in that complicated tax code it's really hard to imagine it going away...plus it's how the government tries influence your actions...
I think they should just auto-deduct anytime you get money and that's the end of it. no tax returns, no thing else. don't mind sales tax either. don't really notice it all that much to be honest. would be nice just to put it on autopilot and not worry about it.
I definitely think tax overhaul is in order. It's just way to easy to hide BS in the code and my primary assumption is that most times tax breaks don't have nearly the impact on changing behaviors that they are designed for. I'd be willing to give up everything, including the home mortgage interest deduction if the rules were simple for everyone.
did you guys watch 60 minutes on the UBS bank in Switzerland? pretty funny shit as the only guy who went down was the whistleblower.
Being slightly liberal, I'm not a fan of sales tax for the simple reason that it's regressive. It taxes a higher percentage of earnings of the poor (because they need to spend all their money to live) rich people get their money and (generalizing) get to keep some of it in the bank. They try to get around that by eliminating sales tax on food, etc...but it seems to me a crummy work-around. I certainly wouldn't want to get into too much of a debate about the rich's money being invested and driving the economy because it becomes a whole chicken and the egg thing, but in my opinion the tax code could be fairer by radically eliminating deductions then, decreasing the marginal tax rates.
...and I like flatter tax rates. I don't like to be punished for success. as for sales tax, the rich will still pay a more significant amount of the tax as they are more big-ticket consumers (or one would assume so).
Yes the same Mike Huckabee who also has used his judgement to pardon violent offenders twice now and had them come back to bite him in the ass. I think I'll wait until some actual economist weigh in on it....
Plus EVERYONE needs to give something up for it to get done. How would taking away the mortgage interest deduction go over? or taking away the deduction for charitable contributions? Or child care tax credits/deductions? It would be the ugliest political hot-potato imaginable so they just keep letting it get bigger and worse...
I'm in the same boat. I'd nix all the liberal stuff I tend to like (energy efficiency breaks, etc) just to drastically simplify the damned thing. Why not just a simple sales tax, with rebates for those under the poverty line and higher taxes on luxury products? Or just start over with a basic employment tax code without any deductions, and require that every addition or change to the code be handled on a line-by-line basis? Anything has got to be better than the system we have now.
The argument goes both ways.."punished for success" could equally be you should pay a little more for the opportunities you've taken advantage of. on the sales tax, the % paid will still be less for a rich person that a poor person...hence it's regressive. People can argue which they think is fairer, but I think the 1st step would be to simplify code...
I agree. about the liberal stuff. And I've been in some business situations where we were taking advantage of credits, etc..that we clearly qualified for by the letter of the law, but I'm sure if they looked at the real impact we had...we made out like robbers on the transaction. I think most incentives work out that way and aren't cost-effective at all!
