<p>Here is the plan:
-Eliminate all deductions
-10% tax on everybody
-Cut government by around 80%
…Or bash the devil rich, bankrupt your kids’ future and feel good about it.</p>
<p>I seriously doubt that mortgage interest had to drop 50 percent.</p>
<p>If we cut govt 80 percent, a 10 percent tax rate would be a rip off…</p>
<p>If there were no deductions at all (no personal exemptions, no standard deduction, no state + local taxes, no mortgage interest, etc) a flat 10% rate on individual income would generate much more money than the current system.</p>
<p>"If we cut govt 80 percent, a 10 percent tax rate would be a rip off… " - Agree, love your comment, how about 5%? As long as they can support army, border control, police (which is local anyway)…We would have terrfic amounts for our kids education and the other things that are not part of CC.</p>
<p>I don’t agree with cutting govt 80 percent, but if that happened… 5 percent would be closer…</p>
<p>Steve Forbes said that we need 17% flat tax rate back in the 1990s. I find it hard to believe that 10% would be enough.</p>
<p>Yes, we should raise taxes on the lower and middle classes because, clearly, they have too much. The middle class has been paying something around 14% actual in taxes. You can look it up. So we raise their taxes and raise the taxes of people who have much less because an idea of flatness is so much better.</p>
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<p>I dont know where 80% is coming from but we do have $16T of debt service. So you cant just base it on having lights turned on in the court house.</p>
<p>1 in 5 children go hungry in America. Raising taxes on the poor is clearly the answer.</p>
<p>[Online</a> NewsHour: Summary of Steve Forbes’ Flat Tax Plan](<a href=“http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/congress/forbes_flat_tax.html]Online”>http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/congress/forbes_flat_tax.html)</p>
<p>Forbes makes his money thru capital gains…and capital gains would not be taxed under his proposal… :)</p>
<p>Oh. Then it wasn’t flat.</p>
<p>Forbes’ plan had a $33,000 deduction, plus no taxes at all on unearned income.</p>
<p>I think current revenues from the personal income tax are around $1.5 trillion</p>
<p>Right now, FICA taxes bring in about $1 trillion, and is a pure flat tax with a rate of 15.3%. Only about 57% of earned income that can be taxed for FICA is, because of the earnings limit.</p>
<p>So taxing all of that income at 10% would generate about $1.1 trillion.</p>
<p>Now add in taxes on unearned income, people who don’t pay FICA but have to pay income tax, etc, and I think it would easily replace what our current, convoluted, byzantine system brings in.</p>
<p>Maybe the rate would have to be 11%.</p>
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<p>Actually, the earnings limit gives it a regressive rate structure, not a pure flat tax structure. The fact that it applies only to labor income makes more regressive as well, since high income people tend to have a higher percentage of non-labor income than middle and lower income people.</p>
<p>We can have a tax system with lower rates and fewer deductions. It just cracks me up that people that come up with ways to tax have their income taxed at zero. Lol</p>
<p>We could have a tax system where you make 20,000 or less… You get paid from the govt. The earned income tax credit… Then you can have a zero bracket. Everybody gets that bracket including billionaires. Then you can have a bracket or two at higher income levels. Maybe a bracket at 40,000 and one at 500,000 or 1 million…</p>
<p>You can have a bracket at 10 million if people want it…whatever…
And we can treat all income the same…</p>
<p>We are not going to do the above…it is a fantasy…</p>
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<p>No it doesnt. </p>
<p>FICA is supposed to be a contribution to a benefit account. Which by the way has a capped benefit, so having uncapped contributions makes no sense.</p>
<p>It is dead flat up to the earnings limit for earned income. That is the point. You pay the same rate for dollar 1 as you do for dollar 113,000.</p>
<p>It’s proof that a dead-flat tax, on all income, could completely replace the current income tax system, with a ridiculously low rate.</p>
<p>If you’d read to the bottom of my post you would have seen that I added in taxing unearned income as well.</p>
<p>^Because??? Did you investigate the reason??? Where are those food stamps? What they have been used for? You can collect 100% in taxes from every single person with any kind of income and that would not be enough to cover our debt. Of course, this is beside the point that nobody will work for free, I guess, you would be, sorry for diminishing you to my level. I am simple lower moral person who is working to support her family and several others. If I have nothing left in my pocket to support myself, sorry, I will work for barter, but I will not work for free, not up there with your higher morals.</p>
<p>What do u mean, cover our debt?</p>
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<p>There are no individual benefit accounts; Social Security and Medicare are pay-as-you-go systems where current workers pay for current retirees. It only looks like a pension plan at first glance, but would be $trillions underfunded if it were accounted as if it were a true pension plan.</p>