I under stand where you are coming from IL. However, they are more a usage fee you pay the government and not a tax. If they were a tax, everyone would have to pay it if they owned a car. We have that, it’s called a village sticker and license plates, etc.
Tollways
Postage Stamps
Parking Meters (if owned by a government agency, not all are)
Building Permits
Copies of Government Documents (Birth Certificates, etc)
Etc
Are all really usage/convenience fees and not really taxes. If you don’t want the product or service, you don’t pay for it. However, it’s more convenient to use the product or service, thus, you may pay a fee for it, to offset the cost incurred by the government/village. After all, why should Jose Sanchez in Juno, Alaska have to pay extra taxes for John Smith to get a copy of his father’s Death Certificate in Springfield, Illinois?
@Cmdr:
Basing taxes on how much income you generate is patently un-American. American culture dictates that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL and therefore, all men should be treated equally. If one man has more of a burden to maintain society than another, then things are not equal.
Obviously all men aren’t equal in the eyes of the law.
For everyone that harps on hand outs, they never look to see how much the wealthy rely on the lower classes to build and keep their wealth.
No one ever questions the additional draw on social services, or that their sheer economic power allows them to persuade local governments to pay for their developments, just as a couple of examples.
Sure, the poor benefit, but I would argue the rich benefit SOOOOO much more.
Never said I had a problem with hands up, Jermo. But all men are created equal in this country. If you’re a bungling idiot you can easily move from a luxurious mansion to a trailer park and likewise, if you are savvy enough, you can move from the trailer park to a luxurious mansion.
But punishing someone for succeeding does not, in my opinion, make any sense. Do we want a country of under achievers? After all, you only punish a child when they do wrong. Since taxes are, in essence, a punishment for you accumulating wealth, it appears you want people to under achieve so as to avoid punishment.
Better would be to dictate a level of “duty” all citizens must render. The easiest way would be to go with a sales tax, this way those citizens who cannot meet even this level of duty can still get all the benefits, while those who can afford the extra duty may chose to do so and enjoy some of the finer things in life.
Perhaps the poor man can only afford a used 1982 Chevy Malibu so he has a duty of 5% and that is $20. But the rich man wants a 2008 Bentley so his duty is closer to $12,000. They have the same duty, because they pay the same percentage. But one man has chosen a more luxurious life style and has volunteered to pay more duty than another man and thus, picks up the slack.
And let’s pretend there is a third man. He lost his leg in Iraq and is recovering, but can no longer work as an infantryman. So he gets a hand up from others who decide to pay more duty than others (because they want finer things.) So this ex-infantryman is paid to go to college and train in a new field and becomes a rocket scientist. He then later turns out to be the next man to buy a Bentley and for his daughter a Ferrari and pays his duty so the next man can get his hand up.
Notice, I am using the phrase hand up, not hand out. Hand outs are how you enslave people. Hand ups are how you help the down trodden get back on their feet and become productive citizens again, instead of destructive.
The tax level is 22% or 23%
my god thats a huge amount to pay. Its a cure worse than the illness.
just tax anything sold at about 15% and luxury goods a bit more. Get rid of tax.
That way illegals have to pay and its ‘the more you buy the more you pay’ system. Rich people buy more stuff and they will pay more naturally.
It would encourage saving money too.
i am quite sure that 22% thing involves wealth redistribution on some level.
@Imperious:
The tax level is 22% or 23%
my god thats a huge amount to pay. Its a cure worse than the illness.
just tax anything sold at about 15% and luxury goods a bit more. Get rid of tax.
That way illegals have to pay and its ‘the more you buy the more you pay’ system. Rich people buy more stuff and they will pay more naturally.
It would encourage saving money too.
i am quite sure that 22% thing involves wealth redistribution on some level.
Even if an illegal worker spends $10,000 a year on taxable “stuff”, that’s still only $1500 in taxes they’re paying, and I doubt illegals are spending anywhere near that amount. Food, rent, and utilities (which would never be taxed under any conceivable flat tax system) probably eat up 80+% of their budget. Just one kid in school, or a trip to the emergency room and they’re back to a net drain. But then, so are most families with kids at the median income level. THEY don’t pay hardly any taxes either.
Jen, if you think progressive taxation is a punishment, I have 2 options for you:
1. Make $50,000 at a 10% tax rate
2. Make $500,000 at a 30% tax rate.
Oh, oh, punish me! I want to be punished! More punishment here!
@Cmdr:
More realistically: Quit your job paying 17.50 an hour so you can avoid paying taxes at all, or go to work and get slammed with a $3,000 tax bill (wiping out all the money you made instead of quitting plus a significant amount more.)
Unless your employer is named Vitto, the vast majority of under-the-table jobs involve picking a crop of some sort or working in the exciting world of hotel santitation. The original point stands: if progressive taxation were a form of punishment, people would never want to earn more money (no rational person would choose to be punished). Of course we know that upward mobility is alive and well in this country and that people work very hard for promotions and raises KNOWING it will put them into a higher tax bracket. $100,000 taxed at 28% > $50,000 taxed at 1%.
That’s a punishment. Better to allow all men and women to pay the same percentage after certain allowable deductions: food, mileage or transportation costs too and from work, medicine/medical, housing + a certain dollar amount, indexed to inflation, per adult and child living in the household for incidental expenses. You’d still only tax the rich, but they’d have to opt into the tax by spending the money. The poor wouldnt be taxed at all since everything they spent on would be deductible anyway.
There is a group of people between rich and poor…
To do anything else is a method of punishing the huddled masses for becoming self sufficient.
Or you can look at it as a fee for membership in a society that allows anyone to become mega-rich? Punihsment, fee, justice, whatever you want to call it- progressive taxation has not stopped us from becoming the top economic and military superpower in the world. It’s only serious competitor is the flat-tax, and THAT is not even a blip on the radar screen of national issues.
Sorry, I know you dislike it when the truth is told, but that’s the truth.
Huh?
Taxes are all regressionary when they are locked to income. The only progressive taxes are usage and sales taxes (provided the sales taxes are not locked onto goods and services needed to prolong life.)
Any tax is regressive- a sales tax would cause people to consume less. Not exactly a good thing in a consumer driven economy.
As for illegals, odds are you’d be surprised what they’d be paying taxes on. Beer would be taxed. Jewelry would be taxed. Postage is a tax.
Yes, beer, postage and jewelry. At last, a way for illegals to pay for all the services they use :roll:
But anyway, how can you be so heartless and cruel as to deny them food and medicine just because they are illegal! You’re a very evil man. You’d let them die on the streets just so you could increase taxes on them!
(Gawd, it’s so good to finally use that argument against someone with the mind set like a certain group of individuals! Turn about is fair play!)
Was Russian your first language? You completely missed my point.
Again, for those who would choose to not actually read about a proposal but would make snap judgements based on false assumptions…
The Fair Tax would prebate (pay in advance each month) the full amount of all taxes that would be spent to the poverty line for a household of whatever size. The only way you actually end up with net tax payments is to spend more on services and new goods than poverty level spending.
It also replaces not only the Income Tax (which is only paid by 48% of Americans) but also the entire Social Security Wage Tax (paid by every worker, with a duplicate amount paid by each employer), Medicare tax, etc.
@Cmdr:
Why do you think President Jackson was so proud when he obliterated the income tax during his presidency?
Uhhh. Andrew Jackson abolished the National Bank, not income tax but, I can play this game too. Did you know that Lincoln was wounded at Gettysburg repelling Pickett’s charge?
All I know is that a tax is only a punishment if it makes you lose money in the long run and judging by the fact that the income gap between the rich and the middle class/poor is growing then it appears that the progressive tax isn’t very punishing if the rich can manage to scrape their pennies together and continue to accumulate wealth.
I think some people assume that if the rich are allowed to pay less in taxes then they will consume more. They won’t to any significant degree. What they will do, is invest that money they saved. Which will mean an even faster accumulation of wealth. Any flat tax or sales based tax that allows the rich to pay less in taxes is just going to allow them to widen that income gap faster than it already is. All you would be doing is allowing them an increased ability for wealth condensation.
Andrew Jackson must have had access to a time machine as well. The first income tax wasn’t passed until 1861:
"When the Civil War erupted, the Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1861, which restored earlier excises taxes and imposed a tax on personal incomes. The income tax was levied at 3 percent on all incomes higher than $800 a year. This tax on personal income was a new direction for a Federal tax system based mainly on excise taxes and customs duties.
http://www.treasury.gov/education/fact-sheets/taxes/ustax.shtml
This looks like it turned into a political discussion. I’m locking it down.
