Posted on 05/01/2010 6:41:36 AM PDT by K-oneTexas
“Everything!” it seems.
No matter who you talk to, everyone seems to have a gripe with the current tax system in America. Part of it you can chalk up to the fact that no one really loves to have any of their hard-earned money extracted from their wallets to pay for government services. There is always a perception of “waste, fraud and abuse” as well as funding certain government programs that you completely disagree with.
Maybe the tax code is the work of the Devil. "Obey Me! Or Else!"
The other part has to do with the notion that everyone thinks “everyone else” should be shouldering more of the tax burden: the not-so-well-off think the rich should pay more; the rich think the middle-and-lower income wage-earners should pay something and everyone thinks foreigners like the Chinese should pay more to import their products to America…except when it is something you want or need, like cheap underwear.
We fought a Revolution to get away from “taxation without representation” in 1776, in case you have forgotten. Now we have “excessive taxation WITH representation.” So how’s that working out for you?
Let’s tick down the problems with the current system and see if we can come up with a magic bullet that might solve these burrs under your saddle:
1. “I pay too much in taxes.”
2. “Rich people don’t pay their ‘fair share.’”
3. Fifty percent of Americans don’t pay any income tax any more.
4. “I pay more in payroll taxes than I do in income taxes.”
5. Lobbyists in Washington get special tax breaks and loopholes for big corporations.
6. “Little guys like me can’t take advantage of the tax code like rich people and corporations do.”
7. “The tax code is way too confusing.”
8. “I pay through the nose on income and payroll taxes and we still don’t have balanced budgets!”
All of these perceptions are true in one way or another to some group or sector of the economy. With over 140 million households filing tax returns, a significant percentage of the population is going to feel aggrieved some way or another each year.
We are sure we never heard anyone come to us in Congress in over 12 years of service and say: “You know, I think I am being taxed just about the right amount to live in a free society protected from invasion and attack by the best military in the world, drive on highways to anywhere in the nation and have a safety net that I could fall into if adverse circumstances befell me or my family.”
So what can be done about it? Every single time we have seen a “tax reform” effort pass Congress, the tax code has become 10 times more complicated and the law of unintended consequences has run amuck by producing outcomes far removed from original goals.
We are becoming increasingly interested in the concept of a consumption tax being passed to completely replace the existing federal tax code in America. But we most definitely do not advocate any sort of consumption tax to be placed on top of the sclerotic tax system that already resembles Swiss cheese with all the loopholes now in it. There is a perception that there are relative winners and losers in the U.S. tax code every year, that it is “unfair” in many regards and that is not a good thing for any democracy.
Let’s tick off some of the reasons why a consumption tax would address the concerns listed above:
1. Everyone would pay the same form of tax.
2. No one would be able to escape it with a tax loophole, deduction or exemption.
3. Class warfare would end because people could not be singled out for targeted tax treatment as is the case now.
4. It is simple…consumption tax collected at the point of sale would very clearly show people what they are paying for the benefits of living in the American democratic republic.
5. Lobbyists, and PACs and all the other things that drive people crazy about the current tax system and campaign finance would be reduced to next-to-nothingness because there would be no loopholes to get or defend.
6. Rich people would pay more in taxes because they consume more each year. If they choose to buy 10 luxury homes and yachts after hitting it big in business, all those purchases would generate consumption tax payment after consumption tax payment.
7. People would be encouraged to save and invest because interest, dividends and capital gains would no longer be taxed. The stock market might quintuple for all we know.
There are two things we would like to see explored further by economic experts, although since hardly any economics expert saw this tidal wave of recession coming along even as late as summer 2008, we are not sure we put a lot of credence in their opinions anymore. The first would be the level of taxation that would be necessary to generate 19 percent of GDP which seems to be the fixed level of federal taxes people are willing to part with since 1970. The other would be protecting low-income people from adverse effects of the consumption tax since they are really the ones who need government assistance, not higher-income folks.
It seems to us that the current price levels of everything we buy have all the income, corporate, payroll, excise and death taxes already baked in them because those are included in the costs of goods sold in the first place. If they are all eliminated, wouldn’t prices then fall flat as a pancake? And then wouldn’t the new consumption tax start pushing up prices from this much lower, compressed level, not a higher one?
We are not sure that price levels might not stay just the same under a well-constructed consumption tax as they are under the current system. And maybe with tax revenue that gets picked up in the black market, perhaps we might even increase tax revenue collections without massive hit squads sent out by the IRS each year.
We have asked some very important people in Washington to come up with some numbers, projections and analysis as to what level of consumption tax would be necessary to completely replace the current miasma of federal taxes. And when they do, we will forward it on to you as quickly as possible so you can decide for yourself if shifting to a broad-based consumption tax would be better than sticking with the devil we know, the current U.S. federal tax code.
‘Cause the current tax code sure looks to be the work of the Devil himself, even a funny one portrayed by SNL's Jon Lovitz. Don't you agree?
The tax system is way to complicated. IRS will give you a different answer for the same question, each time you call. If we could scrap the IRS completely, look how much money we’d save right there. Make it simple, no deductions and a simple flat tax everyone pays, except maybe people living under the poverty line. A tax on every item you buy instead would be very hard on the poor.
The biggest problem with taxation in the US is that the greatest part of it is hidden as “regulations and code enforcement”.
As much as Americans complain about taxes, most Americans, indeed, most Freepers are unaware just how high government imposed costs on their lives and economy have gotten. The part of the iceberg above the waterline is so much easier to see.
Everything.
I have long said if the rest of the country paid taxes at the rate I do, the second American revolution would start tomorrow. I would be OK with it IF there was a law that only those who paid more in tax than they received were able to vote. Or how about - if you directly receive govt services you are inelegible to vote (with the possible exception of social security and medicare after ager 65 - those folks did pay into the system to get their benefits)
Embedded in the philosophy of the law is the destructive principle, so that once it is in effect the economic and political consequences are inevitable. The principle of the income tax is the denial of private property.
There is nothing in the Sixteenth Amendment, there is nothing in the principle of the income tax, which puts a limit on the amount the State may demand, and hence the implication is clear that the individual's absolute right of private property is denied.
The theory of republican government, that its powers are derived from the will of the people, is no safeguard against this denial of private property.
Assuming that the Sixteenth Amendment at the time of its enactment did express the will of the people, every one of them, the substance and effect of income taxation was to destroy the will of any subsequent generation for modification or revocation.
It is unlike any other law. For the denial of the right of private property is in essence the denial of the right of the individual to himself. He is no longer a free person if he is not free to keep and enjoy the products of his labors. --"
Excerpted from From Solomon’s Yoke to the Income Tax by Frank Chodorov
Can I add an amendment to that...lol Allow one deduction for every child to the age of 18 or if they are in college or disabled. Yes yes I know it’s like opening a Pandora’s box to add an amendment, then everyone wants one.
1. Democrats do not pay their taxes. And that is A-OK.
2. Democrat tax-cheats are put in charge of the IRS and
Congressional committees. Two tiered tax system is A-OK.
3. The rest of Americans pay and pay and pay and are
audited and harassed. Frivolous harassment of
non-Democrat and conservative taxpayers is A-OK.
Richard Vedder (Hearing before the Subcommittee on Oversight of the Internal Revenue Service of the Committee on Finance, U.S. Senate, 98the Cong., 2nd Sess., September 17,1984) p.130
that there is one
” (with the possible exception of social security and medicare after ager 65 - those folks did pay into the system to get their benefits) “
And all of those good-for-nothin’ disabled Vets didn’t contribute a darned thing, huh??
vets should have unlimited right to vote as long as they had an honorable discharge - obviously I didn’t get every group that should be exempted, just stating an overall principle.
Our tax system will never get fixed as long it is used for social engineering. Flat tax, fair tax, VAT; they will all contain some sort of political pandering because they will be created by politicians. Any progressive tax, whether on income or consumption, will punish success and reward failure; punish ambition and reward sloth. The purpose of our tax system should be revenue generation and nothing else. Progressive taxes are Marxist. 10% of a lot is way more than 10% of a little. Don’t talk to me about fairness or regressive taxation. Those are Commie buzzwords.
.... The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessing of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?
Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uniformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the FEW, not for the MANY.
From Federalist 62
Hi, I’m Tim Geithner (or Tom Daschle, or Charles Rangel, etc.). I don’t pay taxes.
The problem with the current tax system is that the government that it has to support is too big, too filled with graft and corruption, and there are too many entitlement programs tied to it.
All of this would go away if they stuck to just what the Constitution dictates.
Everything they buy they buy with your money. Government takes it cut which is far higher than any cut that would be taken by charitable organizations.
If entitlement programs were stripped away with the exception of those who really need them (e.g., adult mentally retarded who have no available family to care for them), we could reduce the tax rates so that true charity in the Christian sense could take place. This would benefit the recipient but even more so the donor whose contributions would then be rightly ordered to God rather than having the government inefficiently confiscate these funds.
T. Coleman Andrews, Commissioner of IRS, May 25, 1956 in U.S. News & World Report.
Manifesto of the Communist Party (hint: second section toward the end)
Amen to that one!!!
You and I are either in the same tax bracket or I pay more than you. Either way, I agree completely. We have to find a way to stop people from voting for personal distribution from the treasury.
This happens locally, also. People with no immediate obvious skin in the game vote to raise taxes on property owners to fund unjustifiable redistribution of funds to teachers' unions.
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