Quote:Original post by Khaiy
Besides, it wouldn't be political suicide to gently raise taxes on extremely high-income people-- that measure was incredibly popular, but would have been stonewalled in congress because of a unified minority. Some say that this is not the time to raise taxes, but most people are never going to say that their taxes should be increased at any time. But since America likes big spending, in the end there aren't going to be a lot of alternatives.

Quote:Original post by Spinoza
If their initial tax liability is 12% of 50,000 how does that equal 3,000.

3000 / 50,000 = 6%

Did you mean to say that the typical family making 50,000 has a 6% effective tax liability?

Quote:Original post by tstrimp
You've never heard of dependents or child tax credit? In my example where the family makes $50,000 / year. If the couple has no kids, their tax liability is just over $3,000 if they only take the standard deductions.

Quote:Original post by frob

Quote:Original post by tstrimp
You've never heard of dependents or child tax credit? In my example where the family makes $50,000 / year. If the couple has no kids, their tax liability is just over $3,000 if they only take the standard deductions.

Who does that?

I'm probably not typical on the matter since my father was a tax accountant, a grandmother was a tax accountant, and I have uncles and cousins who are CPAs today.

But I don't know ANYBODY who (admits to) just simply using the standard deductions. I do know people who used the standard deduction after trying to run the numbers, but even that is very rare.

In some ways, I think the "standard deduction" option is a "too-lazy-to-fill-out-tax-forms" tax.

Quote:Original post by way2lazy2care

Quote:Original post by frob
Who does that?

I'm probably not typical on the matter since my father was a tax accountant, a grandmother was a tax accountant, and I have uncles and cousins who are CPAs today.

But I don't know ANYBODY who (admits to) just simply using the standard deductions. I do know people who used the standard deduction after trying to run the numbers, but even that is very rare.

In some ways, I think the "standard deduction" option is a "too-lazy-to-fill-out-tax-forms" tax.

well they'd probably have a lot of other deductions at all levels. It's just easier to compare with the standard deduction because it's standard.

Quote:Original post by Spinoza
To tshrimp:

I'm curious do you find local property taxes unfair and why or why not?

Quote:Original post by tstrimp

Quote:Original post by Spinoza
To tshrimp:

I'm curious do you find local property taxes unfair and why or why not?

I don't so far. It's much easier to see what your property taxes are going to as they typically have a direct impact on the city you live in. Since they are local, they are also optional. If I had serious objections to property taxes I could move to a state with lower rates.

I do have a problem with federal wealth taxes as that money would just disappear into the vast machine that is the federal government with no tangible benefits.

Quote:Original post by Spinoza
I'd still like you to try and state what you think what the baseline for fair is when it comes to taxes.

Quote:Original post by tstrimp

Quote:Original post by Spinoza
I'd still like you to try and state what you think what the baseline for fair is when it comes to taxes.

We obviously need a progressive system of some sort. I would like to see the income tax system drastically simplified. Get rid of pretty much all of the loopholes and lower taxes a bit across the board to compensate. Social security should be reformed and rolled into the general progressive tax system. People just paying into their own SS account is not sustainable as the funds are not actually reserved for individual retirement payments. This means we rely on a smaller base of people paying for a much larger retirement population. Same with medicare. There should be one number coming out of everyone's paycheck for federal taxes which covers the income tax as we know it now, medicare and social security and it should be so simple that you can calculate it off the back of an envelope.

Same with the corporate tax rate. Reduce it considerably and remove the loopholes in the system.