Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:A flat income tax would solve the problem. Everyone pays 25%. No credits, no deductions, no loopholes, no anything. Disadvantaged groups already make out on the receiving end, so things are still skewed to helping those in need. Easy peasy.
Too regressive.
Maybe over a certain threshold.
Not regressive, but fair.
The current system allows most of the population to have a free ride on the backs of the rest.
"as a share of adjusted gross income (AGI), the top half of income earners paid 97.1 percent of federal income taxes. The top 1 percent earned 22.4 percent of total income and paid 40.4 percent of all the income taxes. The top 10 percent earned 49.4 percent of the income and paid 72 percent of the income tax." https://www.cato.org/blog/its-tax-season-five-charts-who-pays-whats-risk
40% of households pay no federal income tax at all. https://taxpolicycenter.org/fiscal-facts/who-will-pay-no-federal-individual-income-tax-2025
Fairness requires everyone to contribute in proportion to their income, neither rewarded for low earnings nor punished for high earnings.
I dont think the lower wage earners should be paying more taxes. I also dont think we should be sticking it all on the highest wage earners either. I think we should change the laws on how certain things are taxed though.
First example, it is not in any way fair to allow 15 million in assets to be handed over to heirs tax free. They have not earned that wealth, no reason it shouldn't be subject to taxes.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:A flat income tax would solve the problem. Everyone pays 25%. No credits, no deductions, no loopholes, no anything. Disadvantaged groups already make out on the receiving end, so things are still skewed to helping those in need. Easy peasy.
Too regressive.
Maybe over a certain threshold.
Not regressive, but fair.
The current system allows most of the population to have a free ride on the backs of the rest.
"as a share of adjusted gross income (AGI), the top half of income earners paid 97.1 percent of federal income taxes. The top 1 percent earned 22.4 percent of total income and paid 40.4 percent of all the income taxes. The top 10 percent earned 49.4 percent of the income and paid 72 percent of the income tax." https://www.cato.org/blog/its-tax-season-five-charts-who-pays-whats-risk
40% of households pay no federal income tax at all. https://taxpolicycenter.org/fiscal-facts/who-will-pay-no-federal-individual-income-tax-2025
Fairness requires everyone to contribute in proportion to their income, neither rewarded for low earnings nor punished for high earnings.
I dont think the lower wage earners should be paying more taxes. I also dont think we should be sticking it all on the highest wage earners either. I think we should change the laws on how certain things are taxed though.
First example, it is not in any way fair to allow 15 million in assets to be handed over to heirs tax free. They have not earned that wealth, no reason it shouldn't be subject to taxes.
Why should the government confiscate it instead of it remaining in the family? There is no moral or ethical basis for that position. The government didn't earn it. It would also encourage wealthy people to simply spend and/or conceal their wealth abroad before death, not to conserve it or invest it.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:A flat income tax would solve the problem. Everyone pays 25%. No credits, no deductions, no loopholes, no anything. Disadvantaged groups already make out on the receiving end, so things are still skewed to helping those in need. Easy peasy.
Too regressive.
Maybe over a certain threshold.
Not regressive, but fair.
The current system allows most of the population to have a free ride on the backs of the rest.
"as a share of adjusted gross income (AGI), the top half of income earners paid 97.1 percent of federal income taxes. The top 1 percent earned 22.4 percent of total income and paid 40.4 percent of all the income taxes. The top 10 percent earned 49.4 percent of the income and paid 72 percent of the income tax." https://www.cato.org/blog/its-tax-season-five-charts-who-pays-whats-risk
40% of households pay no federal income tax at all. https://taxpolicycenter.org/fiscal-facts/who-will-pay-no-federal-individual-income-tax-2025
Fairness requires everyone to contribute in proportion to their income, neither rewarded for low earnings nor punished for high earnings.
I dont think the lower wage earners should be paying more taxes. I also dont think we should be sticking it all on the highest wage earners either. I think we should change the laws on how certain things are taxed though.
First example, it is not in any way fair to allow 15 million in assets to be handed over to heirs tax free. They have not earned that wealth, no reason it shouldn't be subject to taxes.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:A flat income tax would solve the problem. Everyone pays 25%. No credits, no deductions, no loopholes, no anything. Disadvantaged groups already make out on the receiving end, so things are still skewed to helping those in need. Easy peasy.
Too regressive.
Maybe over a certain threshold.
Not regressive, but fair.
The current system allows most of the population to have a free ride on the backs of the rest.
"as a share of adjusted gross income (AGI), the top half of income earners paid 97.1 percent of federal income taxes. The top 1 percent earned 22.4 percent of total income and paid 40.4 percent of all the income taxes. The top 10 percent earned 49.4 percent of the income and paid 72 percent of the income tax." https://www.cato.org/blog/its-tax-season-five-charts-who-pays-whats-risk
40% of households pay no federal income tax at all. https://taxpolicycenter.org/fiscal-facts/who-will-pay-no-federal-individual-income-tax-2025
Fairness requires everyone to contribute in proportion to their income, neither rewarded for low earnings nor punished for high earnings.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:A flat income tax would solve the problem. Everyone pays 25%. No credits, no deductions, no loopholes, no anything. Disadvantaged groups already make out on the receiving end, so things are still skewed to helping those in need. Easy peasy.
Too regressive.
Maybe over a certain threshold.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Too bad every single person on this forum will do everything in their power to avoid paying taxes, but simultaneously complain that the ultra wealthy dont pay enough.
This is massively evident by the extreme TDS mixed with posts on tax planning strategies. The hypocrisy is unreal.
I don’t like paying taxes as much as the next guy, but when you have teachers with similar tax rates as billionaires, you know there’s a problem.
A successful doctor that makes 500k a year shouldn’t have a higher tax rate than Jeff Bezos.
You get my point?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Too bad every single person on this forum will do everything in their power to avoid paying taxes, but simultaneously complain that the ultra wealthy dont pay enough.
This is massively evident by the extreme TDS mixed with posts on tax planning strategies. The hypocrisy is unreal.
I don’t like paying taxes as much as the next guy, but when you have teachers with similar tax rates as billionaires, you know there’s a problem.
A successful doctor that makes 500k a year shouldn’t have a higher tax rate than Jeff Bezos.
You get my point?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:A flat income tax would solve the problem. Everyone pays 25%. No credits, no deductions, no loopholes, no anything. Disadvantaged groups already make out on the receiving end, so things are still skewed to helping those in need. Easy peasy.
Too regressive.
Maybe over a certain threshold.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Too bad every single person on this forum will do everything in their power to avoid paying taxes, but simultaneously complain that the ultra wealthy dont pay enough.
This is massively evident by the extreme TDS mixed with posts on tax planning strategies. The hypocrisy is unreal.
I don’t like paying taxes as much as the next guy, but when you have teachers with similar tax rates as billionaires, you know there’s a problem.
A successful doctor that makes 500k a year shouldn’t have a higher tax rate than Jeff Bezos.
You get my point?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Federal Debt to Hit Record Levels, Budget Office Warns
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/business/federal-debt-record-levels-budget-office.html
The country is still on track to borrow what economists consider an alarming amount of money in the coming years. But the situation, on paper at least, has gotten only somewhat worse, but not significantly, under Mr. Trump’s unorthodox policy mix.
Those were the findings of the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan scorekeeper, in its annual benchmark forecast for the federal budget released on Wednesday. Compared with its projections from January 2025, before Mr. Trump took office, the federal government is now expected to run a $23.1 trillion shortfall over the next nine years, rather than a $21.8 trillion one, a $1.4 trillion wider gap.
The C.B.O. said that the amount of debt held by the public is expected to become much larger than the annual output of the economy, reaching 120 percent of gross domestic product in 2036. That would surpass levels reached in the aftermath of World War II and put the world’s most important economy at risk of a destabilizing debt crisis.
So much for fiscal responsibility of republicans…
Anonymous wrote:A flat income tax would solve the problem. Everyone pays 25%. No credits, no deductions, no loopholes, no anything. Disadvantaged groups already make out on the receiving end, so things are still skewed to helping those in need. Easy peasy.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:At a minimum we should stop cutting taxes for billionaires.
I am in favor of abolishing loopholes. However, that alone is insufficient.
More people need to pay more tax. The progressive nature of our tax system means most of the population is subsidized by a tiny fraction of more productive and more successful taxpayers.
The average income tax rate in 2022 was 14.5 percent. The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid a 23.1 percent average rate, six times higher than the 3.7 percent average rate paid by the bottom half of taxpayers.
The top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97 percent of all federal individual income taxes, while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 3 percent.
How is punishing success even remotely "fair"? A flat tax is fair. No deductions, no credits, no use of the tax code to reward or discourage specific taxpayers behaviors, just a mechanism to collect enough money to pay for essential government services, with no ulterior social or political purposes.
It’s really not “fair.” 5% of 50000 would be felt vastly more than 20% of 500000