Reply #44: There are all kinds of taxes [View All]

[Cats Against Frist]

there's no universal tax rate.

What I would try to do, however, is make all tax rates as flat as possible, and offer all breaks in the form of credits. On the personal income levels I would give credits for children, poverty, child care, student loan interest, low-income housing credits, health savings accounts, retirement accounts, etc. -- but you would only gain access to these credits based on your income.

Same with the higher levels of small business income, corporate income and investment income. As flat as possible, and offer all breaks in the form of credits.

The flat rate could be debatable, but I'm thinking 28 percent.

This might sound crazy, but the idea here would be that disposable income would be taxed at a higher rate than that which is used for operational expense -- on both the home and business level.

I think it might dump some of the ire of the anti-tax obsessives, and if government were streamlined, I would prefer to return a lot of this taxing power back to the states.

Who are the people against taxes? Anti-tax ideologues and rich people. Taxes don't "squeeze" anyone but right-wing authoritarian types in their imaginations. Right?

So it's sort of a compromise. We get a flat tax. We streamline the government and the military, cut out A LOT of pork and return as much as we can to the state level.

I didn't address property taxes, but I think since land is a simultaneous partnership between you and the nation on which your land sits, that your property tax should be the tax that fluctuates in times of necessary tax increases.

Okay -- so maybe my whole system would come crashing down. But it's my dream world.