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Per capita taxes | |||||||||||||||||
I've oft wondered if a per-capita tax might be the most fair. My proposal is replacing all of our current federal taxing systems with a fixed (not percentage of income) tax that all adult citizens pay. Each state would do this too. Our government spends a large amount of money trying to figure out how much you make, how many things you own, when you've spent money. They also exempt some people from sales tax, provide deductions for strange stuff and even pay tax 'refunds' to people that didn't actually pay any taxes. Don't bother trying to compute people's income or spending or property, etc. Just every adult pays a certain amount every year. If you can't pay, you're punished somehow--like you lose fire protection or road use. If you were in a car-pool, everyone would have to drive the same amount--you can't say "I gave money to the poor, so I don't have to drive today" or "I'm paying mortgage interest so I get to deduct a day driving." Deductions are government manipulation of the people. And as for progressive taxes, if your boss was in the car pool with you, would you say 'you make more, so you have to drive more often"--?? In a ladies quilting circle, would you look at the bank-president's wife and tell her that she has to bring two quilt squares next week because she makes more money? No, that wouldn't be fair. They get the same use of roads and schools, the same military protection that you do, so why should they pay more. I don't know where we got this idea that some people are required to pay more than others. BTW, I'm middle-class myself, so I'm not saying that I shouldn't pay a bunch--I just don't think what we do is fair. This system would encourage capitalism and people wouldn't have to hide their money overseas. Business would be more efficient because they wouldn't be worried about all of the government overhead. I ran a business once--the government work almost equaled the customer-work. Think of how many fewer goverment employees there would need to be 'riding in the wagon.' We could get them back working productive jobs, helping to 'push the wagon'. Okay, tell me why I'm wrong.
hrench, Oct 15 2008
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What do you think would be a reasonable amount? The obvious problem is that if the tax is too high, most people won't be able to pay it; if the tax is low enough for the majority to pay, then it will be too low to provide enough money for the gov'ts needs. I could be wrong about that, but I guess someone would need to do the math.
A national sales tax has been suggested to replace income tax. It's sort of progressive being that people that have more money, spend more money. However, it's a partially voluntary tax because you control to some degree how much you spend. Maybe a combination of both sales tax and per capita tax would work.
To maintain the current revenue, the average tax payer would pay 10 to 100 times more in taxes than they currently pay. I think a large number of people would pay more than they earn. The top 5 percent of wealthy US citizens pay well over 50% of the taxes. I think around 20% of adults pay no federal taxes at all.
Flat-tax systems are spreading through the world now. They work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBAr0MzRFU0&feature=channel
Hrench, the "flat tax" discussed in the video you linked is not a per-capita tax, it is an income tax that is based on a flat rate. So for example, a 21% flat tax would mean everyone would pay 21% of their income regardless of their total income.