Like the f.i.ca. score,some one get credit for having hownowner associations.

I have heard the names of both parties on c-span,that doesn't matter now you

have them. The mayor of New York wants to tell you what to drink,next it would

move to other states like 7/11 has moved across the world,and the fast foods

sell more product overseas,what you think don't count anymore,20% of product

is sold in U.S....We have no bargaining power anymore,we take it or leave it.

If you you refuse to pay hoa dues,they can forclose on your home,check it out.

Still new home buyers are hit with extra cash fee's at closings with no help.

 

rant on : I hate the government with every square inch of my body. Taxes could be much lower and amerika a lot better place if we could weed out the massive amounts of corruption and get money out of politics. One example where i live citizens drive junk and every 6 months almost all government people get not just a new vehicle but a $65,000 fully loaded chevy suburban with all options and custom wheels and crap, why can they not drive a pinto without air and work from a doublewide trailer without air conditioning. I work in a place of horrible conditions to pay for their life of ridiculous luxry. Our county tax office has been built 3 times in different locations in the last ten years. this time with marble floors........wtf.... is it any wonder taxes are so high? rant off

 

@ Anotheruser1,people all over the country should hold up on paying county

taxes and pay late fees. That would make local government not have the money

on hand to waste. Counties by law are required to have a budget,no local tax money

coming in they will have to change there way. They have been for years adding

all kinds of fee's and raising the cost of living thru fee's. Red lite camera's,over

$150.00 for a red lite violation with camera.Much more in fee's,just think about this

and look around you the extra stuff you pay for,like water and garbage service.

City pensions is the biggest,they will collect full salary for life after retireing.

Every forclosure reduce's the tax base,that is slowing government.

 

Right, we need this convoluted system of overpayment and refunds because of how rediculous and complicated our tax law is. If there were a flat tax, no refunds, no loopholes, then you would (whoever you are and however much you make) have 10% (example %) deducted from every paycheck, with no option of claiming or not claiming dependents and paying or refunding at the end of the year.

I agree. As it stands, with the with the graduated tax, anybody who pays anything, while someone else is not forced to, is paying more than their fair share. The unfairness appears to increase as you look higher and higher up on the earnings ladder, but that's what this thread is about - People in the upper rungs not paying anything while it's advertised that they're paying more than all the rest of us combined.

For the top 1% 10% taxes is nothing. In the 50's they were taxed over 70%.

 

For the top 1% 10% taxes is nothing. In the 50's they were taxed over 70%.

I disagree. it is something. it's 10%. Same chunk you'd pay.

someone living on 5k/year could say the same thing about you. Where is the line, across which "you make too much and should have to pay more tax than the rest of us?" It seems like that line would move around a lot depending on who's drawing it. So that's why flat tax is the only fair tax IMO.

 

Im just stating history and the way taxes worked when the country worked and we built our infrastructure. Even with a flat tax rate you will still create an over whelming divide between rich and poor. Back in the day after WWII and the depression. The super rich were taxed over half their wages down to a couple percent for the poor. But under this system where the billionaire paid enormous taxes we could afford a military, gov, police, health care, etc.. All with no national debt. Its when they started all these loopholes and corporate tax breaks and dropped the rich's taxes down is when we started not being able to afford to run our country. In anycase our taxes need to be increased by ALOT!!! We've got roads that are falling apart along with bridges and we can't just keep borrowing money from China. Thats gonna be our demise. Plus it doesn't bother everyone we owe a communist country all this chedder? Kinda scare when communism is holding fascism up.

 

Im just stating history and the way taxes worked when the country worked and we built our infrastructure. Even with a flat tax rate you will still create an over whelming divide between rich and poor. Back in the day after WWII and the depression. The super rich were taxed over half their wages down to a couple percent for the poor.

Seems fair to me. If poor men fight and die to protect the country, then rich men should at least pay the bill. Recent wars have been fought by poor men at a historical level.

 

For the top 1% 10% taxes is nothing. In the 50's they were taxed over 70%.

Don't confuse average tax rates with marginal tax rates. At one point, the top marginal tax rate was 91%.

But it still comes down to the question I asked originally. If you believe that Person A should pay a different tax than Person B, what is the metric of "fairness" by which you determine if each person is paying "their fair share"? The only metric that has been put forth thus far is that, instead of paying the same tax, each person should pay the same percentage of their income in tax. If so, then if the "top 1%" have to pay 70%, then why should you and I not have to live by the same rules we impose on them?

 

In anycase our taxes need to be increased by ALOT!!! We've got roads that are falling apart along with bridges

As much as I don't want to agree, I think I must. Maybe try closing all the loopholes and see what kind of money our tax system can really generate, before we raise the rates, but not sure if that's enough.

we can't just keep borrowing money from China. Thats gonna be our demise. Plus it doesn't bother everyone we owe a communist country all this chedder? Kinda scare when communism is holding fascism up.

Totally agree, and it makes me sick.

 

The only metric that has been put forth thus far is that, instead of paying the same tax, each person should pay the same percentage of their income in tax.

I'm interested in your opinion how it should be done. You seem to have one, but are withholding it. If you're not keen on posting it here, PM me - I'm genuinely interested.

 

In anycase our taxes need to be increased by ALOT!!!

Or our spending needs to be decreased by A LOT.

I think we are at, or very near, our tax capacity. In general, there is a maximum fraction of an economy's productivity that can be confiscated by the government in the form of taxes. The hard part is determining where that point is because it is influenced by many factors that very significantly from country to country and change over time. My understanding is that most indications are that the U.S.'s tax capacity is in the vicinity of 25% for all levels and about 20% for federal. A related, but different, concept is the optimal tax rate which is the tax rate that maximizes tax revenue. This rate is somewhat lower than the tax capacity but is very hard to find and it varies a lot depending on the kind of tax.

To understand the latter, just imagine that you come up with a brilliant idea and want to license it to others so that they do the work and give you a fraction of their revenue. If you take 0% of the revenue, then you will have lots of licensees but will get no income from it. If you take 100% of the revenue, then you will have no licensees and, hence, get no income from it. Somewhere in between is a point where, if you change your rates in either direction your income goes down. If you raise rates, you lose enough in total revenue from all of the licensees to more than offset the higher fraction that you get from the sales that remain. On the other hand, if you lower your rates then the increase in total revenues isn't enough to offset the fact that you are getting a smaller fraction. Finding that optimal point is the hard part because it can only be found by exploring the tradeoff space, it is a moving target, and there is a lot of noise in the system.

A good example, and one for which there is actually a fair amount of data for, is the capital gains tax rate. In the years prior to 1968 the maximum capital gains tax rate was 25%. In the 1970's the rate was raised a couple of times and each time the revenues from the tax decreased. By 1978 it was basically 40% and Congress lowered the rate to 28%. Despite cries that the government couldn't afford to give such a lavish tax break to the rich, revenues from the tax immediately shot up 30%. In the 1980s and 90s the rate was both increased and decreased several times and each time the revenues went up when it was decreased and went down when it was increased. Comparing capital gains tax revenues over several years centered on 1975 and several centered on 2000, the tax revenues were 11 times greater in the latter period despite the fact that the capital gains tax rate was about half of that in the earlier period. The size of the economy accounts for about a factor of four of this, so the effective revenue increase was about 2.5 to 3. What is particularly interesting is that there seems to be a repeatable relationship between the realized long-term capitital gains and the capital gains tax rate. When the rate was 40%, realized gains was 1.6% of GDP. When the rate was in the 28% range (whether the result of a decrease or increase) the realized gains were right at 2.3% of GDP. When the gain was in the 20% range, the realized gains were about 4.2% of GDP. Thus, even if there was no effect at all on GDP, the 20% rate was bringing in more than 30% more tax revenue than the 40% rate. But there was a significant effect on GDP and during the periods of low capital gains rates the economy has generally grown at a considerably higher pace.

 

Seems fair to me. If poor men fight and die to protect the country, then rich men should at least pay the bill. Recent wars have been fought by poor men at a historical level.

Very good point, I never even considered that.

 

As much as taxes shrinking my paycheck annoys me, if we didn't have them, we would not have the thousands of services they pay for.

 

As much as taxes shrinking my paycheck annoys me, if we didn't have them, we would not have the thousands of services they pay for.

Yeah.... What's the punchline?

The statement represents a false dichotemy, namely that we have to chose between high taxes or no taxes. No one (with the exception of a very small handful of totally out-of-touch idealists) is talking about eliminating either taxes or services altogether. The discussion is two-fold: (1) What is the proper level of spending/taxation, and (2) how should that tax burden be apportioned?

 

I'm interested in your opinion how it should be done. You seem to have one, but are withholding it. If you're not keen on posting it here, PM me - I'm genuinely interested.

As I indicated in a prior post, I would be comfortable with any of three options as long as they were the only form of taxation (with the possible exception of excise taxes and the like) and a Constitutional Amendment with real teeth backed it up.

Overall, I think I favor a national sales tax (but only if personal and corporate taxes were eliminated). There are some real issues with transitioning. For instance, people that invested in Roth IRAs paid taxes up front and now they get to pay them again when they spend the money they pull out. But those are transient issues and solutions can be crafted to deal with them.

If we do have any kind of direct personal taxation, I believe it should be by apportionment, meaning that each person pays the same tax (not the same tax rate, but the same tax) and for the same reasons the Founding Fathers set things up that way. It avoids the tar pit of having the majority decide that they can ride a cash cow of entitlements at the expense of the minority. I've already said that I would banish withholding and make people pay their taxes directly. I would love to see each Congressional district be responsible for collecting its roughly 2.5% of the federal tax burden and have each representative have to present a check from his district for that amount once a year.

But the above is an unrealistic pipedream and I know it. As an alternative, I can accept a flat tax rate on income with no exemptions or deductions, but once again we have to decide what constitutes income. For businesses, if we have a corporate tax, we have to decide what are expenses. In particular, large purchases of durable goods. One thing I would like to explore would be whether a true cash-basis accounting is doable. Under this plan, you write-off all purchases immediately, but you also pay taxes on all income immediately. This would include if you take out a loan. So if you borrow $1 million to buy a new crane that costs $1.2 million and pay the rest of the cost out of cash reserves, the transaction constitutes a $200k expense that year. As you pay off the loan, everything you pay (principle, interest, fees, everything) is an expense in the year you pay it. So the rate at which you pay off the loan takes the place of depreciation. The same with real property. If you pay cash, that can be written off immediately. If you finance it, then you get to expense the cost at the same rate you pay off the loan. The main goal here is to make things clean, easy to do, and to largely remove tax considerations for most business decisions. Any time that your total cash inflow exceeds your total cash outflow for the year, you pay a flat rate on that net. If your expenses exceed your inflow, then you don't pay tax and can carry the loss to the next year. If there is a personal income tax, then the money paid to employees and individuals (i.e., not other businesses) such as investors is considered an expense; it is a transfer from the business economy to the personal economy. The recipient then pays the flat personal income tax rate on the whole thing (whether its salary or capital gains or whatever). If there there is not personal income tax, then payments to individuals, including employees, is NOT a business expense and the company pays the flat corporate tax but the recipient pays nothing.

But all of this is on the revenue side. We will never get our house in order unless we seriously reform the spending side and that means aligning spending with revenue over any reasonable amount of time.

My pet idea for that is to adopt tiered budgeting. It would work something like this. Every dollar appropriated by Congess has a Budget Tier associated with it. So the Defense Department, let's say, might get $200b in Tier 0 Funding, $100b in Tier 1 funding, and so on and so on. To determine the total federal-wide dollars available in each tier, you do something like the following: In, say, 2010 there is a certain official GDP that becomes known sometime in 2011. Let's say that tax revenues generally end up being 20% of GDP. So in planning the budget for 2013, Congress be able to assign 15% of the 2010 GDP to Tier 0 and 5% to every Tier above that. Since we currently spend about 150% of our tax revenue (i.e., we are borrowing $1 of every $3 we spend), there would currently be Tier 11 money being spent.

Here's the power of the approach: The votes needed to release a given Tier increase as the Tier number increases. Say they increase 3% per Tier with Tier 0 requiring the current 50%+1. That means that approving the last bit of money that we are currently spending would require passage in both houses by 83%. The more money they want to spend, the harder it is to pass it and the more broad based the approval has to be.

This will force Congress to prioritize and to do so in a transparent way. It also buts automatic curbs to pork because if Senator Z want to have that new $10 million bridge across the dry creek bed in his district approved and wants to get it moved into Tier 3, then he is going to have to convince other Senators to move $10 million dollars out of Tier 3 and up higher. It also makes it hard for them to play the common game that is played now (more so at the local and state level) where they ask the voters for approval to raise taxes because there isn't enough to pay police and firefighters, yet they never seem to ask for approval because there isn't enough to pay for painting the courthouse or planting new flowers around city hall. Under Tiered Budgeting, the city would have approved, say, through Tier 4. If they needed to go to the voters, it would be to get approval for Tier 5 and the things in it. If they want to put core services in Tier 5 in order to pressure voters into approving it to prevent the loss of essential services, then they are going to have to explain why the landscaping for city hall was placed in Tier 2.

This is also very flexible for emergencies. If something comes up, then you can renegotiate what (unspent) items are in what Tiers as long as the total in each Tier is kept below the limit. So you would always have the option of putting the emergency money in the next unapproved Tier (and moving what was there upward) and then voting to approve the Tier according to the required votes for that Tier number. This makes intuitive sense. In my personal and business life, if I routinely spend less than I make, then I can be very easy going on what I consider "an emergency", but if I routinely spend 50% more than I make, that "emergency" better be damn real and damn serious before I can justify spending anything on it, but if I choose to spend money on it that I had already approved for something else (and, as a result, do NOT get to spend money on that something else), then I can be as responsive as I need to be.

It also trickles down very nicely. Say I am DoD and I have so much money in each of 6 Tiers, three of which have been approved. Some of that money, as in any budget, is going to be up to the DoD to decide where it goes and what it gets used for. So they give a funding package to each of their subordinate commands with a particular mix of Tiers. The subordinate commands do the same thing. Eventually, if I'm the chief for a hydraulics shop on an air force base, I get my funding authorization and I know how much money of each Tier I have to work with, some of which is dedicated for specific authorized purposes and some of which is for general shop operations. I am immediately authorized to use money in those tiers that have been approved by forbidden to use any from Tiers that have not yet been approved.

This would help address (it would not eliminate) the end of year spending binge that almost all government entities go on in order to avoid losing those funds. You can only binge on the rest of the money in Tiers that have been approved. The rest of the money isn't "lost" because it was never approved.

 

Seems fair to me. If poor men fight and die to protect the country, then rich men should at least pay the bill. Recent wars have been fought by poor men at a historical level.

There are three problems with this argument. First, we haven't had conscription for about 40 years, so everyone in the armed forces today is there willingly. If the argument is that "the poor" are overrepresented in the military, then perhaps we should place a limit on the number of people from lower economic strata that are permitted to enlist or be commissioned.

Second, the policy that would be much more consistent with the sentiment would not say, "Person A has to pay much higher taxes because they are a member of a group that, as a whole, is underrepresented in the armed forces while Person B gets to pay much lower taxes because they are a member of a group that, as a whole, is overrepresented." How is this "fair" if Person A is career military and Person B is anti-military to their bones? Also, based on this rationalle, shouldn't women pay much higher tax rates than men given that, still now, women are underrepresented not only in the military as a whole, but particularly in combat roles? Or how about blind people or really short people or fat people or any other group which has a significant disparity with regards to military service? Those are the kinds of traps that await when policy is based on group politics.

Third, the "rich" ARE the ones paying for the military. The latest available numbers from the IRS are for 2009. The top 1% paid 37% of ALL personal income taxes with an average tax rate of 25%. Now, that's only part of the story and if the top 1% had 40% of the AGI, then I would argue that they were not paying their "fair share". But, in fact, the top 1% had less than 17% of the AGI, so they are paying more than twice their proportion of the tax burden (which was 11% overall). Looking at the bottom 50%, they paid only 2.3% of the personal income tax burden (an effective rate of less than 1.9%) despite receiving about 14% of the AGI. Note that the average effective tax rate for someone in the top 1% is 13x what the average effective tax rate is for fully half of the people in the entire country. On a dollar basis, people in the top 1% made, on average, 62x what someone in the bottom 50% made but paid 800x more in personal federal income tax.

 

There are three problems with this argument.

Not really. It's a matter of shared sacrifice. Richer serve in fewer numbers, and so the burden of preserving our way of life falls more heavily lower income citizens. It's not quite the same as doing the actual service, but at least paying the bills is something. It's fair to participate in some way.

the "rich" ARE the ones paying for the military.

Which I already stated was fair. Where's the problem?

 

Not really. It's a matter of shared sacrifice. Richer serve in fewer numbers, and so the burden of preserving our way of life falls more heavily lower income citizens.

So, by that reasoning, since women serve in fewer numbers (they make up about 15% of the active duty force), should they have to pay a higher tax rate?

And why should Person A whose in the military and in the top 1% pay several times the tax rate (and many times more than that in actual taxes) as Person B that is near the median income and not in the military?

Even assuming that we agree to accept the argument that people in the top 1% should pay higher taxes because, regardless of their own status, other people in that group are less likely to have served in the military, does that mean that ANY slanting of the tables in that direction is "fair".

Once again, I ask the question I've asked repeatedly, what is the metric by which you determine whether someone is paying their "fair share". Asked another way, is there ANY level of taxation of the rich that should be considered excessive?

 

So, by that reasoning, since women serve in fewer numbers (they make up about 15% of the active duty force), should they have to pay a higher tax rate?

Not an apples to apples comparason, unless you're comparing rich men to women. Rich men are in every other way, aside form wealth, equal to poor men.

And why should Person A whose in the military and in the top 1% pay several times the tax rate (and many times more than that in actual taxes) as Person B that is near the median income and not in the military?

My post refered to economic strata, not individuals. I believe it's fair that if the top strata receives the benifits, they should participate.

Even assuming that we agree to accept the argument that people in the top 1% should pay higher taxes because, regardless of their own status, other people in that group are less likely to have served in the military, does that mean that ANY slanting of the tables in that direction is "fair".

Maybe. But I am talking about a group that secures liberty for everyone, and makes the ultimate sacrifice. Other factors would be taken on a case baises.

Once again, I ask the question I've asked repeatedly, what is the metric by which you determine whether someone is paying their "fair share". Asked another way, is there ANY level of taxation of the rich that should be considered excessive?

You tell me.

 

Not an apples to apples comparason, unless you're comparing rich men to women. Rich men are in every other way, aside form wealth, equal to poor men.

Fine. Then pick any of dozens of other groupings. Should male Democrats be taxed at a higher rate than male Republicans because they are less represented in the military (particularly in the officer corps)? The point is that by arguing for policies based on group identity, then you open the door for all other policies based on group identity.

Once again, I ask the question I've asked repeatedly, what is the metric by which you determine whether someone is paying their "fair share". Asked another way, is there ANY level of taxation of the rich that should be considered excessive?

You tell me.

I've already given my preferred metric, namely that Person A should pay the same tax rate as Person B. I'm not the one saying it is fair to disproportionately tax the rich. You are the one asserting that it is not only fair that they pay a much higher fraction of the taxes, but that it is "fair" for them to have to pay a higher fraction of their income. Fine. How do you propose to measure when "fair" has been achieved?