If not, why not?

I've watch 4 people die in the last year where Medicare picked up the combined tab of close to 1 million, the care prolonged their lives 1 week to 4months. So yes they need to pick up more of the load but we need to fix this mess called Medicare. Life is for the living not keeping the dead alive.

The argument is misleading......
The sliding scale already makes the higher net incomes pay a higher percentage. So do you want to lower that percentage to what a teacher pays, or decrease the amount of loopholes? I suspect you are referring to loopholes, aka, fishing trips "researching" a book or fishing article.

That's a loophole?

Is that what you call a business expense?

Once upon a time I used to have a commercial hand-line/jigger license. At the time licenses were easy and cheap, and the write offs were awesome. One of my better moves.....of which I have very few.

I know I'm getting old but didn't we just have this debate a week or two ago?

uh huh.....and a while before that......and.....

flat rate no loop holes or on income tax natioal sales tax

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-gets-feisty-not-class-warfare-math-172623358.html


Your not old DBA just not watching the news..

Yes. EVERYONE should pay the same rate (%).

Flat tax all the way. No "loopholes", no having kids for a write off, but best of all NO IRS.

What's so wrong with across the board fair?

As long as fair means a tax on the percentage of disposable household income, not gross household income.

You flat-rate advocates either don't get it, or are on the upper income bracket, because a conversion to a flat rate system does NOT benefit lower and middle class income makers.

Here's a little C/P............



Tax Rates

U.S. individual income tax rates are progressive, meaning that higher tax rates apply to higher incomes. The top marginal tax rate for the 2008 tax year was 39.6 percent, which is low by historical standards in this country. Millions of low-income workers owed no federal taxes at all.

Read more: Income Vs Taxes Paid United States | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_5144404_income-taxes-paid-united-states.html#ixzz1YSflt9is

You mean after lotto tickets, cell phones, cable TV, internet, doghnuts and RockStar?

It's easier for poor to pay taxes if we make living expenses for them cheaper. That's why walmarts and apartment complexes are so important. Oh and don't forget grocery outlet. duh.

The tax code stacked is about five feet tall. A lot of lobbyists and political contributions made that possible.

Of course a flat tax would mean huge tax breaks for the wealthy and an even greater shifting of the tax burden to the middle class and poor. Sounds fair in theory - until one does the math.

I like the proposal of the flat tax because it shows how many stupid people are out there. Like Eyeman's $30 car tabs, most of the retards that voted for it were paying less than $30 for tabs already.

There's a damn good reason Billionaires like Steve Forbes* get huge boners when they hear about a Flat Tax.




*Because they can do math and know numbers n stuff, dummy.

How about flat rate, no deductions and the ONLY thing congress is allowed to adjust is the bar. The bar being the agreed upon poverty level.

So, two options here for a $20K poverty level:

$100K = $10K tax.
$20K = $0 tax

or

$100K = ($80K * 10%) = $8K tax
$20K = $0 tax.

So the poor aren't harmed and all that's left is to decide the percentage for everyone else.

An AP article in USA Today:

WASHINGTON – President Obama says he wants to make sure millionaires are taxed at higher rates than their secretaries. The data say they already are.
"Warren Buffett's secretary shouldn't pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett. There is no justification for it," Obama said as he announced his deficit-reduction plan this week. "It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay higher tax rates than somebody pulling in $50 million."
On average, the wealthiest people in America pay a lot more taxes than the middle class or the poor, according to private and government data. They pay at a higher rate, and as a group, they contribute a much larger share of the overall taxes collected by the federal government.
The 10% of households with the highest incomes pay more than half of all federal taxes. They pay more than 70% of federal income taxes, according to theCongressional Budget Office.
In his White House address on Monday, Obama called on Congress to increase taxes by $1.5 trillion as part of a 10-year deficit reduction package totaling more than $3 trillion. He proposed that Congress overhaul the tax code and impose what he called the "Buffett rule," named for the billionaire investor.
The rule says, "People making more than $1 million a year should not pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than middle-class families pay." Buffett wrote in a recent piece for The New York Times that the tax rate he paid last year was lower than that paid by any of the other 20 people in his office.
"Middle-class families shouldn't pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires," Obama said. "That's pretty straightforward. It's hard to argue against that."
There may be individual millionaires who pay taxes at rates lower than middle-income workers. In 2009, 1,470 households filed tax returns with incomes above $1 million yet paid no federal income tax, according to the Internal Revenue Service. But that's less than 1% of the nearly 237,000 returns with incomes above $1 million.
This year, households making more than $1 million will pay an average 29.1% of their income in federal taxes, including income taxes, payroll taxes and other taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.
Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay an average of 15% of their income in federal taxes.
Lower-income households will pay less. For example, households making between $40,000 and $50,000 will pay an average of 12.5% of their income in federal taxes. Households making between $20,000 and $30,000 will pay 5.7%.
The latest IRS figures are a few years older — and limited to federal income taxes — but show much the same thing. In 2009, taxpayers who made $1 million or more paid on average 24.4% of their income in federal income taxes, according to the IRS.
Those making $100,000 to $125,000 paid on average 9.9% in federal income taxes. Those making $50,000 to $60,000 paid an average of 6.3%.
Obama's claim hinges on the fact that, for high-income families and individuals, investment income is often taxed at a lower rate than wages. The top tax rate for dividends and capital gains is 15%. The top marginal tax rate for wages is 35%, though that is reserved for taxable income above $379,150.
With tax rates that high, why do so many people pay at lower rates? Because the tax code is riddled with more than $1 trillion in deductions, exemptions and credits, and they benefit people at every income level, according to data from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress' official scorekeeper on revenue issues.
The Tax Policy Center estimates that 46% of households, mostly low- and medium-income households, will pay no federal income taxes this year. Most, however, will pay other taxes, including Social Security payroll taxes.
"People who are doing quite well and worry about low-income people not paying any taxes bemoan the fact that they get so many tax breaks that they are zeroed out," said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center. "People at the bottom of the distribution say, 'But all of those rich guys are getting bigger tax breaks than we're getting,' which is also the case."
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was pressed at a White House briefing on the number of millionaires who pay taxes at a lower rate than middle-income families. He demurred, saying that people who make most of their money in wages pay taxes at a higher rate, while those who get most of their income from investments pay at lower rates.
"So it really depends on what is your profession, where's the source of your income, what's the specific circumstances you face, and the averages won't really capture that," Geithner said.

Kind of argues for a flat tax, very limited exemptions, doesn't it? We have a 60,000 page tax code so everyone, and I mean everyone, gets their tax break.

Since 10% of American households own 90% of America's wealth, they should pay 90% of America's taxes.