Do we use the wrong criteria for determining who pays more taxes?

I’ve been saying for years that the US needs a national sales tax. It’s a consumption tax. You buy stuff, you pay. Rich people would pay more because they spend more money. It’s very egalitarian. I don’t think should be in lieu of income tax, but in addition to. It doesn’t even have to be on EVERYTHING. It can be just on goods deemed ‘luxury’ items.

Is there still a ‘stamp tax’ in the US? In England, there used to be a transaction tax on the purchase of stocks and investments. The documents, to be legitimate, had to have a stamp put on them and this cost a fee that was given to the government.

And how about charging lobbyist an entrance fee to the Capital Buildings? They aren’t there as private citizens, they are there, as paid employees, representing corporations and special interest groups. If they want to get up on a soap box in front of our paid representatives, they should pay a fee into our collective coffers for that privilege.

Because why should people who don’t want to pay have a free ride? Isn’t that what the right would argue about the poor? But, now the people on the right want to be the ones not paying their share? The irony.

@JLeslie
Plenty of people are already getting a free ride. That factor would not change.

There is a difference between someone who has nothing to pay, and those who have but do not want to pay.

@josie I disagree and align more with @JLeslie‘s comment in that we/she was referring to the wealthy who have a greater capacity to cough up more funds with little to no impact on lifestyle…the “haves”. Within this group of people are the “haves” who will do anything to keep every red cent they have and never volunteer to pay any more than they already do. So I agree with @JLeslie that we could and should up the ante for ALL the very wealthy who can afford to pony up a few more bucks to help support what this nation needs to do to get out of this mess no matter whose fault it is!

I sincerely doubt a voluntary good-will approach to additional taxation would get legs.

I have given this example before. I would vote agaist affirmative action, but if I had children I would list them as Hispanic and take every advantage possible while it is the law. I am willing to vote for what I believe is more just or for the greater good, but I am not willing to be the only one doing what I feel should be the law. It seems hypocritical I know, but I think this is how most people function.

It seems to me that there are two major ideas behind taxation. The first is that people should pay a tax commensurate with their ability to pay. The second is that taxes should be absolutely equal for everyone—that is, equal in terms of the tax rate.

Both are different ideas about fairness. I don’t think that the idea of voluntary taxation would be seen as fair by anyone. People will generally feel that if someone else doesn’t pay their fair share, why should I?

The other problem is that people don’t want to fund things they don’t approve of. I’m sure there are “tax resistors” on both the left and the right. On the left, people don’t want to fund the military. On the right, people don’t want to fund “handouts” for the poor.

If we were able to earmark our taxes for programs we approved of, how different would our priorities be, as a nation? In essence, that would be a vote of approval or disapproval of governmental policies. How many people would fund the IRS?

I think that anything involving numbers is gravely misunderstood by the majority of Americans because they lack the math skills to figure things out for themselves and are thus left at the mercy of pundits and spin-doctors who are experts at deluding people.

The thing is that policy is made by those that have a vested interest in treating the average American like a mushroom (kept in the dark and fed bullshit) and the only way to refute them is to be branded as a Socialist.

@cazzie Not really. More precisely, such a tax would be regressive, but you and I already went round-and-round on this over a year ago. You may have forgotten, but I haven’t.

@jerv I try to forget when other people are wrong, so I don’t hold it against them next time we meet. giggle

@cazzie We already have a state sales tax where I live. Everyone pays it.
That is on top of income taxes and property taxes, fuel taxes, communication taxes and so on.

@wilma yes, that goes to the State. What I’m suggesting.. and it isn’t a new idea, is that there be a Federal Sales Tax on certain things. I think there already is on things like Plastic Surgery, is that right, did that go through?

There are luxury taxes on some things in some states.

@cazzie, consumption taxes benefit rich people more than poor people, since poor people generally have to spend all their money, while wealthy people spend a tiny fraction and save the rest.

You said you wanted to limit it to luxury items—that’s certainly a necessity for an egalitarian consumption tax but it doesn’t address the fact that a lot of the money that rich people have isn’t spent—and on top of that, wealth adds to itself when you have a lot of it.

@Qingu it depends on what you tax. And as I mentioned as well.. a stamp tax.. and a lobbyiest tax.

@cazzie How about capital gains? Most of us poor folks don’t really have a diverse stock portfolio or anything like that, and it wouldn’t hit those who do hard enough that they would hav eot rely on food stamps to avoid eating out of dumpsters. .

There was a time when that sort of stuff was taxed, but somebody got the bright idea that all of our economic woes could be fixed by putting enough loopholes and exemptions in that section of the tax code as to make it irrelevant :/

I thought the US had capital gains tax? I don’t think the problem lies with personal taxes, though. The corporate tax system in the US stinks to mighty high heaven. Remember Enron? The fact that that could have happened, and that the whistle was blown by a mid-level accountant… it really smells of LuthorCorp and a Marvel Comics evil nemesis, doesn’t it not? We don’t need Superman… we need Taxman and Accounting Girl to sort this out.

@jerv Your answers were spot on.

@cazzie, I’m actually for low corporate taxes, provided there are incentives against the kind of fraud that Enron perpetrated, and for channeling the extra profits from low taxes towards investment, hiring, and worker pay rather than multimilliondollar golden parachutes.

Well, @Qingu as we’ve seen, the government can give them tax breaks and bail out money, but they can’t tell them what they should do with it, even when they are expressly told. They consistently bite the hand that bails them out.