Poll of the Day > My very liberal friend posted this on Facebook. Give me a good response.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Found it rather ironic because hes a huge Bernie supporter and looking to give him a funny reply.

Your friend clearly doesn't understand how our society works.

I'd suggest posting an assortment of images that lists all the jobs and resources that function entirely based on tax dollars.

See how quickly society would crumble if we just got rid of all taxes. Or cut them drastically.

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The point of the message in the image is that income is taxed repeated, instead of just once. Basically, the message is that everything should just be taxed once, presumably on a progressive income tax scale.

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orlouge82 posted...

The point of the message in the image is that income is taxed repeated, instead of just once. Basically, the message is that everything should just be taxed once, presumably on a progressive income tax scale.

This.

Its more of a critique.

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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya9onCut4z4
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Taxes are pretty needlessly convoluted. It's probably mostly so they can keep taxing you as opposed to just collecting a one time tax. Kinda like how loan sharks would prefer you to do monthly payments rather than pay all at once up front. Also, your friend sounds more libertarian than liberal

There should be a flat tax percentage on everyone

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OhhhJa posted...

Taxes are pretty needlessly convoluted. It's probably mostly so they can keep taxing you as opposed to just collecting a one time tax.

Fairly sure it's so they can tax you half of your income without it being laid out infront of you in a nice big figure.
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No that system does makes sense.

What does he want, one big broad rate for all income that can't be adjusted as well?

If I tax you 3 times at 5% or once at 15%, what would you complain about more? "Well at least I was only taxed once!"

Or he wants the lady buying bananas for her kids to pay the same tax rate as the guy buying cigarettes just because it's simple enough for his Facebook meming brain to understand.

Tell him that if you don't want him to be your friend anymore.

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Taxation is theft

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Muscles posted...

Taxation is theft

tag still accurate
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Muscles posted...

Taxation is theft

Demanding that society takes money from others and pay for social programs to help compensate for your mistakes is also theft.

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First rule: Everyone deserves a job that pays enough for them to live on in the area where they do that job.
Second rule. Nobody should be taxed under the amount of money required to live in the area they do their job.
Third rule: Everyone making money over the amount needed to live in the area they do their job (up to a limit obviously) should pay the same percentage in taxes.

Say a good estimate is 20k a year to just rent a 1 bedroom, buy food and pay for transportation. Nobody should be taxed on the first 20k they make a year. That can vary based on cost of living in an area, but should not go over 30k max.

After that a flat % should be taken out of all income, I would say 33% would probably be enough if everyone actually had to pay that. No more loopholes, no more "re-investing" (Looking at you Amazon) etc. If you make money over a base amount, you pay 33% in taxes.

To fix the current student loan crisis, I would also increase the "no-tax amount" by the amount you repay your student loans per year (up to 2x the amount of interest they would accrue), which would be the maximum you are required to pay for student loans per year).

This will of course never happen as it would suck for the extremely wealthy and they have all the power, but at least it would be more likely to happen then Bernies plans etc, which have no chance at all of being passed (sadly).

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orlouge82 posted...

The point of the message in the image is that income is taxed repeated, instead of just once. Basically, the message is that everything should just be taxed once, presumably on a progressive income tax scale.

Nothing can be taxed just once

My wages are taxed
I spend money at a business
The business pays it's employees
They employees wages are taxed

Repeat

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Mead posted...

There should be a flat tax percentage on everyone

No, that's stupid.

Graduated tax rates exist for good reason.

streamofthesky posted...

No, that's stupid.

Graduated tax rates exist for good reason.

It works fine in many european countries, you just start taxing after a minimum base amount (usually 30k) so everyone can live comfortably, then tax everyone the same.

Way better then here, where not only do you actually get taxed after 12k from your income, but everyone pays sales tax etc....so even if you are retired and living on $1000 a month (Barely getting by), you still end up paying a good 10% in taxes.

Of course the biggest difference is the wealthy and rich actually still pay the full amount of taxes there, while here, some get away with paying no taxes or something like 2%.

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There's one inaccuracy in the post: Income tax is only collected once -- you're not "paying income tax on [your] money they already TAXED". If s/he thinks that owing money during the income tax filing period is double taxed, s/he doesn't understand why s/he is paying in.

Mead posted...

There should be a flat tax percentage on everyone

A flat tax is regressive.

Let's say it costs $20k to pay for the necessities of living. With a flat tax of, say, 20%, a person making $20k would be paying $4k in taxes, leaving $16k to pay for those $20k in living expenses. A person making $1M would be left with $800k to pay for those $20k of living expenses.

With the current graduated system, the government has determined that it takes $20k to live, so doesn't collect income tax on the first $20k. So, that person making $20k has $20k left to pay for those $20k of living expenses.

Which system would you rather have?

I haven't looked too much into it, but people have been advocating for what they call the Fair Tax system, which I believe abolishes personal income tax and replaces it with a national Sales Tax coupled with everyone getting a rebate from the gov't to cover the basic cost of living.
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Blaqthourne posted...

Which system would you rather have?

a flat tax. Like I said in my damn post.

tax income at around 40%, eliminate all loopholes, and get rid of the taxes aside from income tax

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Mead posted...

a flat tax. Like I said in my damn post.

tax income at around 40%, eliminate all loopholes, and get rid of the taxes aside from income tax

Why do you hate poor people?

and lower middle class

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD0EHX8Bsr4

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Mead posted...

a flat tax. Like I said in my damn post.

tax income at around 40%, eliminate all loopholes, and get rid of the taxes aside from income tax

The problem with that is that 40% of 20k/year has a much, much greater impact on quality of life than 40% of $2m a year does. If you're going with a flat tax approach, you need some sort of minimum income below which you can't be taxed, otherwise you end up taxing people into homelessness. That minimum income is also going to vary based on a number of factors, including where one lives, how many children one has, one's marital status... basically, defining that minimum means you'll end up with just as convoluted a tax system as you've got now with different brackets.

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streamofthesky posted...

Why do you hate poor people?

and lower middle class

At a fair flat tax rate with no loopholes, social programs for the poor would be properly funded and fairly distributed to those in need. Theyd be better off than they are now.

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Mead posted...

a flat tax. Like I said in my damn post.

tax income at around 40%, eliminate all loopholes, and get rid of the taxes aside from income tax

So you want a system that's a much bigger burden on people making the least amount of money.
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Blaqthourne posted...

So you want a system that's a much bigger burden on people making the least amount of money.

Actually sounds more like it would put a heavy squeeze on those stuck in the middle, given his addition of hand outs to the poor after that post. So there will be a bunch of people in the unenviable bracket of "just a bit too wealthy to be considered poor"

Really not sure what the opposition to the graduated income tax is. It's really not even that complicated, certainly less so than supplementing a regressive flat tax w/ all sorts of programs and funding streams.

Muscles posted...

Taxation is theft

Currency is created by the State and given value through taxation. Get rid of taxes and your favorite coins and paper strips lose their value.
Put another way, taxes are base-lines for economic currency demand (aka, "I need US currency because I have to pay US taxes using US currency").

Incidentally, this is also why nations that do not issue their own currency tend to wind up at the mercy of other nations, with Greece being the obvious modern example.

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Blaqthourne posted...

So you want a system that's a much bigger burden on people making the least amount of money.

People making the least amount of money would be paying the lowest taxes and would qualify for financial assistance that would be far better funded than it is now since the current system puts the vast majority of tax burden on the middle class

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Mead... When you make less money, 40% of your check is far more valuable to you than 40% of a billionaire's check is to the billionaire. 40% of your check could mean you are homeless. 40% of the billionaire's check means he doesn't get to extract quite as much of a dragon's hoard out of the economy.

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Gaawa_chan posted...

Mead... When you make less money, 40% of your check is far more valuable to you than 40% of a billionaire's check is to the billionaire. 40% of your check could mean you are homeless. 40% of the billionaire's check means he doesn't get to extract quite as much of a dragon's hoard out of the economy.

yeah I hear what youre saying, but still think everyone would be better off

lower class folks generally cant make ends meet to begin with and rely on assistance programs that are constantly being targeted and slashed

tax every dollar made at the same rate and theres a lot more money going into the system to be there for the folks that need it

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Mead posted...

yeah I hear what youre saying, but still think everyone would be better off

lower class folks generally cant make ends meet to begin with and rely on assistance programs that are constantly being targeted and slashed

tax every dollar made at the same rate and theres a lot more money going into the system to be there for the folks that need it

If you went with your 40% flat tax, assuming full time 40 hrs/wk (2000 hrs/yr), someone making that $15/hr min wage that that movement is aiming for would go from paying $3413 to $12,000, a 251% increase. That would likely put them squarely in the poverty level, while there's a decent chance that they aren't under the current system (going from a take home of around $26.5k to $18k).

Someone making the federal minimum wage of $7.25 would go from paying $1553 to $5800, a 273% increase.

Someone making $500,000 would go from paying $150,689.50 to $200,000, a 33% increase.

Someone making $1 million would go from paying $335,689.50 to $400,000, a 19% increase.

Someone making $1 billion would go from paying $369,965,689.50 to $400,000,000, an 8% increase.

I pulled the taxes owed from the 2018 1040.

If you went to a 40% flat tax, you would be greatly increasing the number of people who would need government assistance.
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Blaqthourne posted...

If you went to a 40% flat tax, you would be greatly increasing the number of people who would need government assistance.

hey if theyre making $15 an hour like you describe in your example, theyd be better off

under the current system poor people dont pay many taxes, the rich pay practically no taxes, and everyone in the middle gets stuck paying for everything

tax every dollar

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Mead posted...

hey if theyre making $15 an hour like you describe in your example, theyd be better off

Only if you consider being basically wholly reliant on the government to be able to live being better off. How is going from being able to pay for everything you need by yourself, to needing government assistance to pay for necessities "better off"?
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doesn't mead still let his wife make all the income while he stays at home?
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Mead posted...

the rich pay practically no taxes, and everyone in the middle gets stuck paying for everything

"The top 1 percent paid a greater share of individual income taxes (37.3 percent) than the bottom 90 percent combined (30.5 percent)."
https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2018-update/

If you're going to complain about the rich supposedly paying no taxes while pointing out that the poor hardly pay any, why would you want to switch to a system where the poor would pay several multiples of what they currently pay while the rich would only have a negligible increase?
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Blaqthourne posted...

"The top 1 percent paid a greater share of individual income taxes (37.3 percent) than the bottom 90 percent combined (30.5 percent)."
https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2018-update/

If you're going to complain about the rich supposedly paying no taxes while pointing out that the poor hardly pay any, why would you want to switch to a system where the poor would pay several multiples of what they currently pay while the rich would only have a negligible increase?

IMO the mis-understanding comes from the fact that the money lost to taxes means a LOT less to the rich than the poor. As a result it seems like the rich pay less while the poor get heavily burdened even though that's not quite the case. After all, 1 dollar out of 100 is a bit more meaningful than 10 out of 1,000 despite both being 1%.

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Jesus guys, like I said above, it's done many places, and you just don't start taxing people till they make enough to live on, it's generally 30k a year, then it's a flat tax after that.

So if you take Mead's 40% and apply it to average americans, almost everyone would be better off except the upper middle class and wealthy.

If you currently make 40k a year for instance, under the new system you would pay no taxes on the first 30k, and 40% of the last 10k. That means 4k total in taxes. Compared to our current system where you pay 0% on the first 12k 10% on the next 10k and 12% on the next 30k. In such a situation a person would currently pay only 3k in taxes (so you would actually pay more with the flat tax at 40k (mind you that is not filing jointly etc).

Anywone making less than 30k but over 12k would pay less taxes. Anyone making 30k-50k would pay around the same, and anyone making over 50k would pay more taxes over all.

Honestly I don't think 40% is needed though, and something along the lines of a 33% flat tax rate for all incomes over 30k (per person), would be fair, actually increase the total taxes collected and protect those people who are having the hardest time getting by.

Meanwhile cutting out the regan tax cuts for the wealthy, the loopholes for them and for corporations etc, would drastically increase the amount of taxes collected and ensure things are more fair over all.

The next step is to stop making our prison systems and medical systems for profit, stop having people become billionairs off our medical system (and letting people die etc) all together. I'd like to see our education system at least become non-profit as well (doesn't have to be free mind you, but again, we don't need people becoming billionares based on charging people for an education).

But whatever, the corporation overlords are not gonna let any of that happen.

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