Reply #32: Income Tax a Brain-Dead Way to Raise Revenue

[rally2xs]

Those in the "higher tax bracket" will almost
invariably promote the "flat tax" as the only
"fair" tax, they then ramble off a couple of
ridiculous statistics they claim demonstrate they pay
"more then their fair share"

The fact of the matter is completely opposite;

-------------------------------------
Correct!  Why is that?  Because:

1) The rich have their ways of avoiding ANY income tax.  Swiss
bank accounts, captial gains that aren't collected until
they're actually realized by sale of the capital, etc.

2) Lotsa "rich" people don't even HAVE an income!!!!
  They have a PILE!  Of MONEY!  They sit on the pile, live off
it piecemeal, and just don't have anything reportable to the
IRS.

3) Lotsa other "rich" people have a pile and invest
in tax-free financial instruments like municipal bonds. 
Doesn't matter if they made 100 million dollars on the
interest from municipal bonds, Uncle Sam has no conduit to
that money - it is NOT TAXABLE!

What a bonehead method of taxation.  It is BROKEN.  It DOES
NOT WORK.  Fewer than half the citizens even filed income
taxes:

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/07in13ms.xls

The link show 142 million individual tax returns.  There's
maybe 305 million citizens?  How stupid is that?  But we
continue with a broken methodolgy for raising  money!!!   Duh,
wonder why things don't get better?  Any ideas?  Hmmmm???
-------------------------------------


Even with a true progressive tax, and even if we did not
consider how easy it is for the wealthy to find tax haven and
deductions, they still pay a far LOWER percentage of their
wage to "over all" tax then the middle and lower
class as we can see as we find demostrated here


Who Pays Taxes?

The short answer is this: you and I pay the taxes that rich
and powerful people ought to pay, but don’t.

-------------------------------------
Yep.  It's 'cuz we're boneheads, that don't have the gumption
to see a broken system for what it is.

Aaaaandddd.... of course the even more insidious reason that
it doesn't work is the CORPORATE income tax.  Hint:
Corporations don't pay a dime of corporate income tax.  The
Corporation's customers do!!!  And... via this bonehead tax
system, we end up TAXING OUR EXPORTS!!!!   Is that the most
stupid thing you've ever heard?  We wonder why nobody buys
American cars overseas.  Duh! They're expensive, that's why.  
 And, they're expensive because they have about 22% of their
price that is soley going to Uncle Sam, not to workers, not to
corporate executives, not to stockholders.  This is not the
way to generate wealth within the nation. 

So, were STUPID enough to try to tax the rest of the world via
an embedded corporate income tax, but guess what?  The rest of
the world is smarter than we are.  While our own people can't
see the lack of functionality of the income tax as a way to
fund the nation, foreigners can very easily see that it is an
idiot-test for them to flunk if they buy American products. 
Duh... buy an American car, fund the US Gov't to the tune of
22% of what you paid for the American car.  if you don't
happen to like the USA, it's even more of an idiot test...
-------------------------------------

In the year 2000, at the height of the last economic boom and
before the most recent round of tax cuts were enacted, IRS
data shows that the richest 400 taxpayers paid 27% of their
income in federal, state, and local taxes. On average, these
400 taxpayers each had taxable income of $151 million. All
other taxpayers had average taxable income of only $34,600,
and yet their tax burden was 40%.

-------------------------------------
Average taxable income of only $34,600?  Why do you suppose
that is?  Could it be that ITS TOO EXPENSIVE TO DO BUSINESS
HERE and that corporations have moved, and continue to move
overseas?  Y'think?  Locally (Fredericksburg, Va.) we had a
Belden Wire & Cable plant close and move to Mexico.  While
I was on a holiday about 3 weeks ago, I was listening to WIBC,
Indianapolis, Indiana which had a news item that the 1100
workers at the Whirpool plant in Evansville, Indiana were
going to lose their jobs at the end of next year because the
plant was closing and moving operations to Mexico.  Yay,
NAFTA!  What a crock!  Do I sound mad as hell?  You bet I am. 
And, guess what, I normally vote Republican ('cuz the
opposition has been obsessed with collecting up all the guns
for a very long time), but my parents were both US Army
veterans and UAW members, and this stuff just sickens me.  But
anyway, the corporations moving overseas, or to Mexico or
Canada, means those 1100 workers in Evansville, along with
thousands and hundreds of thousands of workers all over the
country that are in the same boat, get to replace their
good-paying factory jobs with crappy-paying service-sector
jobs, if indeed they all even get jobs at all, which some
won't.  Some will go back to living on a spouse's income, move
back home with parents, move in with grown children, etc.

This is the end-time, folks.  If we don't do something about
the income tax making manufacturing to be a "too
expensive" thing to do in our country, we are looking at
an economic train wreck.  More and more people will fall into
the category of either having no income, or having such a
meager income that it cannot be taxed.  There will not be
enough "rich" folks to tax to bring prosperity to
the country even if you take everything they have.  Prosperity
comes from making things, gowing things, mining things. 
Without that, we're screwed, its that simple.
-------------------------------------

Using that reality, a "true" flat tax would result
in a far higher progressive matrix then anything we have or
have even considered

-------------------------------------
Forest / trees stuff.  Its not who pays the income tax, its
the income tax that is a poison on the American landscape. 
Its the 2nd worst idea in the history of this country, right
behind slavery!
-------------------------------------

I believe the only way we can really facilitate a
"true" flat and continue the services necessary for
proper governance would look something like this;

Remove personal payments for all government services, for
instance sales tax, park fees, tolls, road tax that's added to
gasoline, etc.

However the government would still "bill" for that
revenue, the bill from local government will of course go to
the federal government, the federal government will then
"collect" those fees through a universal and flat
income tax

Bing, a "true" flat tax

Now, you get a progressive talking like this and I guarantee
the wealthy will stop immediately asking for a flat tax
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/7595 
"The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein

-------------------------------------
Fergiddaboudit!  Just get rid of the income tax, and run the
country on a consumption tax like we did from its inception up
until the great mistake in 1913, when the income tax was
passed.  Repeal the 16th amendment, run the country on a
National Sales Tax, and realize prosperity once again.  Fail
to do it, and watch the country continue to decline.  Its that
simple.
-------------------------------------