this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2025
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politics

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-40
It's Time for a Flat Tax (reason.com)
submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Even a flat tax is progressive. If I make 10 times as much money as you, I pay 10 times as much in tax.

...He clearly doesn't understand what "progressive" and "regressive" taxation means. To break it down Barney-style, if you're poor and make $1000/month, and I'm better off and make $10,000/month with a flat tax of 10%, then you end up with $900, and I end up with $9000. With $900 you might be able to get food and gas for a month. With $9000, I can pay a mortgage, save a bit, and get gas and groceries. This isn't even taking into account that most of the obscenely wealthy take a tiny income and rather live off of investments, which are taxed differently and lower.

tl;dr: Whoever wrote this is clearly too stupid to be taken as a serious person.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

Honestly, I think a flat tax is just fine if the rate is 100%. The taxes can be used to cover UBI plus universal health/child care and room and board for everyone. See how into flat taxes he is then.

/s but his idea is also bad

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I'm not even going to go into why this is a dumb idea, and how it doesn't take into account the ability for states to regulate their own tax codes.

This has been talked about and tried to some extent in the US, but you can't make it work unless all states agree to a common tax rate, which will never happen. It precludes any ability for states to regulate their own resources as well, and hands a slate of power to the tax board regulating these things in various ways. Go back and read what jillions of economists have already said on this.

We need a federal tax system reform that stops corporations and wealthy people from cheating and not paying taxes. That's what we need.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Well a flat % tax wouldn't be too bad. But that's never what they mean. They want trillionaires to pay the same dollar amount in taxes as someone in poverty. And even if we could get them to pay the same percentage of their income in taxes as someone in poverty. The wealthy are experts at hiding their income.

Though honestly thieves like the wealthy need to be taxed harder than anyone else as punishment for their theft.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

A flat percentage-based tax rate would cause a lot more problems than you'd think. Fixing the loopholes to ensure the wealthy are paying their fair share would be of a much larger benefit to everyone immediately. Maybe they can work on the rest of the simplicity after we can stop all the rich bitches from cheating the existing system.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Oh no I get that that's why I said they're experts at hiding their income. All those loopholes would ultimately make it less functional. It would still be more fair than paying the same dollar amount but you're not wrong they will cheat every way possible in order to steal a few dollars more.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

When people say the rich aren't paying their fair share, they're saying taxes should go up on the richest 1% and 0.1%, who are often paying effective tax rates in the single digits most years because of their various tax schemes and shelters.

The people who are actually paying the highest effective income tax rates are the upper middle class, who between federal, state, and local taxes are being soaked for very little in return (European tax rates without free health care or university, for example). But they're not rich, and they don't have the same options actual rich people do.

If tax rates were flatter, I'm still confident the first group would carve out loopholes so they could keep hoarding wealth. Does the author think Donald Trump, of all people, would actually increase taxes on himself and his rich friends?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

These phony "libertarians" are just capitalist ideologues pushing the usual pseudo-science. Useful idiots.