Quote: (09-21-2012 03:28 AM)MMM Wrote:
Quote: (09-20-2012 02:05 PM)ElJefe Wrote:
A real tax-reform to abolish all these deductions except a simple, personal deduction, and all income whether derived from employment, capital gains, interest, dividends or profiting from selling your house would be taxed according to whatever bracket that income put you in. And you wouldn't have six seperate brackets. You'd have three. One for the lower classes, one for the middle, and one for the upper - ideally at increments of 5, 10 and 10 percent (ie. marginal rates of 5, 15 and 25 percent).
This would lower the marginal tax-rate for the highest earners from 35 to 25, while raising the effective tax rate on the nation's wealthiest from 20 to 25.
Yep. A flat tax is the way to go.
Obviously, I'm too wordy, because you didn't see that I didn't advocate a flat-tax.
A progressive tax-system makes the most sense to me as an economist. The marginal value of a dollar for you if you're relatively poor is much, much higher than the MV for you if you already make 50,000, or even 100,000 USD.
Great Britain was the first country to introduce a progessive tax-system. It enabled them to defeat France during the Napoleonic Wars and bank-roll the entire European effort against Napoleon as well.
The marginal tax rate in the US on income is very high. I'm advocating reducing that and instead making all forms of income subject to the same rate of taxation.
A year from now you'll wish you started today