[bigrigjoe66]

I was just wondering if a flat tax would be better than what we have now. I am in favor of a flat tax. Now all the politicians and fat cats hire people to get them out of taxes and some people don't file at all. Illegals and all those Indians who own all the stores and motels don't even pay. A flat tax on what you buy, nobody gets a round. I guess 22% is fair.

[Malaki86]

I agree 100% on the flat tax.

[Jumbo]

Now, Are you refering to a flat across the board income tax where everybody pays the same rate? Or, the Steve Forbes eliminate the income tax and go with a national sales tax on everything?

[GMAN]

It depends on what taxes are eliminated as to whether I would want a flat tax. It would be more equitable. We would no longer need to file a tax return. That would save this country billions of dollars. We could eliminate the IRS, which would save billions in wages and benefits. A flat tax, as proposed on purchases, would essentially be a national sales tax. The mechanism is already in place for collection. One thing that I do like about it is that it would potentially give more control back to the states. The states could collect the money from businesses and then send a check to the feds. I doubt that we would get rid of the IRS with this type of tax but it could happen. I think 5% would be a better rate for a national sales tax. 22% is way too high if more people are paying. Nothing would help unless the people force the government to become smaller. The flat tax could help.

[bigrigjoe66]

Ok whatever the rate I mean no irs no taxes other than the national sales tax.

[GMAN]

We will never be able to collect enough taxes to support our government until we begin to force them to reduce spending and get rid of so much or the bureaucracy. It isn't nearly so difficult to support a constitutional government. One reason so many have not taken a stand against these new taxes is that so many of these people are getting a handout from the government in one way or another. We need taxes to support our government. My problem is with the amount of taxes and the unfairness of the current way in which the government exercises those levies.

[Jay B]

Sounds like you are refering to the fair tax. Find one of the books on the subject by Neal Boortz. He explains it very well and makes some good points on how and why it can work.

[VitoCorleone99]

The Fair Tax is an interesting concept. If there are as many illegals and other undocumented workers as we're led to believe, then they would have to pay the same taxes on their expenditures as I pay on mine. Plus you would stop punishing productivity and you would encourage savings and investment. (Contrast this with the borrowing and spending that we're encouraging right now. "We need to get credit flowing." Rinse, recycle, repeat... thank God for the ChiComs.)

I would only have a couple of concerns with the Fair Tax. I wonder about the effect that it may have on people who live on a fixed income and currently don't pay much (if any) income tax. I don't think anybody should go without paying taxes, but I can't fault the people who benefit under the current system if they would get hammered in a transition to a new system. I've heard ideas about refunds for the first however much in annual expenses and such, but this just sounds like another bureaucracy to me. Second is the fact that, unless the 16th Amendment were repealed in the process, we would be left open to repeating today's runaway taxing and spending at some point in the future.

As long as some people have more money than other people, there will be a sizable number who clamor for their "fair share," no matter how you arrange the taxation. There are people to this day who think that lower-income Americans somehow got screwed by the tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, even though the facts show exactly the opposite. Now we have a system where roughly 40% of people pay no income tax at all, the poorest actually collect credits from taxes that someone else paid, and the wealthiest pay a larger portion of the federal take than they did before. Do you think people know this? Of course not. They think that $8 a week in their paychecks (until it expires next year) is better than what they got under the former president. Do you think people knew that "tax cuts for 95% of working families" really meant temporary $400 rebates? Do you think people realize that the $600 checks we got last year were bigger? Of course not. (Given the First Lady's spin on those $600 rebates, I must admit that the widespread celebration of this year's $400 is rather amusing to me.)

Even if you did repeal the 16th Amendment, the politicians would find a way to start playing their social engineering games. It would just take them a little more work to keep it constitutional. If there is a way to restrain any growth in taxation constitutionally, then I think the Fair Tax could put us far ahead of the rest of the world in terms of economic growth. That's an awfully big 'if' though.

[LightsChromeHorsepower]

The Bush tax cuts went disproportionately to the wealthy. That is part of why we are where we are now- They invested those tax savings in hedge funds that made wildly speculative investments.

Something that I find interesting is that although the US has one of the highest nominal tax rates of any industrialized nation, it has one of the lowest effective overall tax rates.

What's the difference?

Our tax codes are littered with special exceptions or loopholes that allow all sorts of what amounts to legal tax evasion. Who benefits the most from all this?

If you guessed corporations and the wealthy- bingo!

I'm not sure what the answer is, but there are a few things I am sure of-

1. What we have now isn't working.

2. If you want services, you have to pay taxes.

3. The services need to be delivered a lot more efficiently.

4. You have to get the taxes from people who have the money to pay them- as in the wealthy & corporations.

This is a good discussion.

[GMAN]

You cannot get all the taxes from the wealthy and corporations. Most corporations are smaller businesses. The tax burden has always fallen on the middle class. That is the largest group in this country. The wealthy cannot afford to pay enough taxes to keep this country going. The poor don't earn enough to pay much, if any, taxes. That leaves the middle class. I think either a flat rate on everyone, regardless of income, would be the most equitable if we are to continue on this road to tax income. The country was funded at one time with excise tax and property taxes. Excise tax is a tax on imported goods. The current tax systems is not fair. It unfairly taxes or punishes those who earn the most money. Some would argue that the rich can more easily afford to pay higher taxes. A flat rate would tax everyone the same, regardless of income. We pay so many other taxes I am not sure that we really need an income tax. We need smaller government. The fair tax promoted by Neil Boortz is a value added tax collected like sales tax. In fact, we could call it a national sales tax. One problem I see with a national sales tax has to do with them congress being able to change the rate on a whim. I think it would be easier for congress to raise taxes under this type of system.

I think most people would agree that we need to pay taxes to support our government. We disagree on the amount of taxes and how it is collected. Right now, the burden falls squarely on the employer. I don't think that is fair to the employer. One reason this was set up this way is to force compliance. It would be much more difficult to collect taxes from people who had to sit down and write the government a check each payday. It would force taxpayers to see how much tax they actually pay. I think there would be a rebellion if everyone had to sit down and write a check. A flat tax with the same rate for everyone makes much more sense, whether that is from a value added tax or income tax.