Hmm, I was thinking again as the result of a newspaper editorial and thought it might make an interesting post. Are you aware that the top 50% of the tax payers pay 97% of the taxes in this country? I did a little google search and
came up with this table.
I am not complaining because I understood what I was doing when I started it. My rate of pay is fairly low but it's sufficient for me to live off. The goal was to reach my Social Security age of 70 which I did this year. I only have the standard deduction but I am still at the 13% tax rate which is the average for all tax payers. That will change next year as I receive a full year of Social Security and it will change again when I have to start withdrawals from my IRA. I really didn't expect to be in the top 50% of taxpayers while in working retirement.
All this talk of taxing the rich and the rich avoiding taxes isn't based on reality. The rich are paying more than their fair share but they are an easy target because they are small in number.
I am sure others will disagree with this but the fairest tax system is a flat rate system where everybody is taxed at the same rate. This is what the founders intended because it prevents taking from the rich to give to the poor. Yes you know the name for our current tax system and it's Marxism. It was started by the progressives who were schooled in German Marxism during the late 1800s. They couldn't implement it because the constitution prohibits an unbalanced tax system so they amended the constitution in 1913 with the 16th amendment to allow this. The key words are "without apportionment" and "without regard to any census or enumeration".
Flat rate taxes have been suggested several times in the past but they never got beyond the discussion stage. This is probably because the voters would protest higher taxes. How much higher would they have to be to maintain the same amount of income? As the chart says, 13.3%. I wouldn't object to that tax rate because I am already paying it and I wouldn't object to paying a bit more if needed. I will be paying more in the future but I will be receiving more income.
It's also interesting to note that the chart shows a total tax income of 1.5 trillion dollars. Democrats currently want to push through a 3.5 trillion dollar spending plan but costs range from 1.5 trillion to 6 trillion depending on who's plan you're talking about. New programs are budgeted for 10 years so what they are really talking about would be a 350 billion dollar a year spending plan. To make the plan sound better, they are talking about only funding it for 5 years however it's still going to cost 350 billion a year but they can call it a 1.75 trillion dollar spending plan. Either way, that is a lot of money.
The truth is the government spends money on many things that it shouldn't. If the government controlled its spending, there would be enough money to pay down the national debt and after that, the people would have a lower tax rate. Unfortunately the government likes to use tax money to buy votes so they have little incentive to cut back on their spending. While the Democrats are the biggest spenders, the Republicans are not without blame. Either they go along with the Democrats or they have their own priorities.
We probably need to throw nearly all of them out of office and start fresh with people who don't care for reelection. They would have the courage to do what should have been done years ago.
It looks like the solution to our problems is fairly easy on paper. The reality is to do it you need to convince a large number of voters that increasing their taxes is a good idea. Probably the real solution would be to only allow those who support themselves or are supported by Social Security in retirement to vote. Having voters who are capable of working but have found a way for government to support them without work is insanity because they will always vote for more of the same.
