Take all your income. Taxable, non taxable, etc.
Your total gross income each year.
Then what you owe the feds each year.
What percent of your total gross income are you coughing up to the feds?
Not interested in AGI. Just gross income as individuals and taxes paid.
(Yeah, I know, you also have state income tax in many cases, tax on gas, sales taxes, property taxes, etc. but let’s just look at the basics.)
God Himself only requires 10%. I’d think anything above that is thievery. That’s 10% of your income: No deductions, no property taxes, no gross receipts taxes, no weird Spanish American War reparations taxes, etc.
First, no more property or income taxes
2nd a Flat Tax across the board
3rd cut unnecessary spending
4 no more welfare
5 Crucify the owners of the Fed, abolish lend and spend, and tell Red China to FOAD
6 Closed borders/Undisturbed Isolation
7 All foreign interests PNGed/Crucified depending on my mood
8 Legalize all the guns drugs and whores and leave taxation thereof to the states
7% across the board sounds reasonable. No more penalizing people for doing better.
This too but more crucifixions
yeah %10 IF they could use it properly would do great BUT the problem is not the amount its how its used
seems we need to cut out so so so so so so much and get back to the basics and 0 special interest idiocy etc…
As little as possible and still perform duties required by constitution and some if the stuff added on.
No federal taxes. Make them ask the states for it. Then we pay to the state according to what we can legislate locally. I think income tax is immoral. Property tax is also as a rent check to the govt. Consumption tax is palpable.
States then negotiate with Fed what they want to pay for Fed services. No more Fed having direct coercive access to the pockets of every citizen.
In 2014 the average effective tax rate for:
The richest 1% of taxpayers paid an average 24.7% effective rate
A taxpayer making an average of $75,000.00 had an effective rate of 19.7%
Trying to answer your question as I understand it:
If you use everything we made (total income) and total taxes paid, our 2018 effective rate was 13.02%.
If you use the taxable income and total taxes paid, our 2018 effective rate was 15.29%.
Our marginal rate for 2018 was 24%.
The problem with just about any tax plan you come up with, absent a progressive rate such as we currently have, is disparate impact on the lower brackets.
Why a %? Why not a flat per person rate. The rich and the poor are equal, right? That would only be fair.
Too 1st Century A.D. Should be 10% tax with Leftists hanging from street lamps…
I would pay 15% just to see that. 
False. If the tax system was actually a flat rate (15%) with no deductions whatsoever, you would see bottom end wages rise to a accommodate the difference as employers would have to pay it in order to get people to work. Hell, the savings in accounting costs alone would probably cover the “raise.” Would these people be pissed at the end of the year when they didn’t have a fat refund check made up of other people’s money (a-la the EIC and other refundable tax credits now)? Yep. They would be ready to riot! But guess what, they would bitch and moan and not do a damn thing.
I’m sending a check next month for more than I ever made when I considered myself poor, and that’s after after paying in all year. Tax season sucks.
I don’t think a flat 15% would cover our nut.
Aside from that, I don’t think you are getting what folks mean by disparate impact: Simply, if I take 15% from a guy making $200.000 it doesn’t impact his lifestyle as much as 15% from a guy making $24,000. $3,600 from that guy’s pocket means something doesn’t get done/bought/fixed/repaired. $30,000 from the guy making $200,000 sounds like a lot more, but it generally doesn’t hurt as much - his kids aren’t going without braces.
This is where I’m at. We should al pay the same amount into the system to get the same vote, rights, roads, etc out of the system. Equality is only heralded when people “get” something for it, not when they have to give!
and not only that, but it should all be due at the end of the year, no interest free loan to the .gov. Once people realized what they were paying and had to really be responsible for it- they would start holding the Politicians accountable for every damn dime spent.
That right there would FORCE a revolution of mind and people would absolutely reign in their government from being a hydra headed monster in a mere matter of years.
Its insane that everyone pays a different amount, yet everyone gets the same vote, roads, rights, etc…
Why exactly should any one man be forced to pay more than another when they get the same out of what they pay? It’s wrong.
It’s like we are all at a big dinner table and had the same meal and drinks, but everyone pays a different amount. It’s nuts.
Divide the bill equally, or start giving the folks that pay more, more for what they pay.
Maybe I’m the exception here, but I don’t mind a 25%-30% tax rate so long as it actually goes to where it needs to. I have no issues paying off our national debt, and giving the military more money for TRAINING, but it’s the bureaucracy and politics that we have that kills me more than paying the taxes.
The false assumption here is “lifestyle.” It’s wrong to say what someone’s lifestyle is and should be nor how people take risk and leverage companies and opportunities. Our economy is sluggish because we can never have a guarantee of what taxes will be and long term investing, growth, tech, employment is dwarfed.
That said, everyday staples should never be taxed. Food, gas, cars, clothing, etc. Hence why I favor consumption taxes over income tax. I also favor people paying taxes for what they use, not for what they don’t.
All tax models should also include a required balanced budget based on actual govt revenue.
Disparate is a two sided coin / double edged sword. Somebody is looking at you thinking you should give more so they get a bigger SSDI or welfare check.
Rich asshole number one inherited a 600 acre estate with a huge trust. He has never worked a day in his life. It is all under a foundation with 100 acres open to the public to view some rare hummingbirds or something. He pays himself a salary, with an AGI of 500k, pays about 110k a year in federal income tax alone. All the money he lives off of has been taxed numerous times when first made, in capital gains, in inheritance taxes, etc. for several decades before it became a trust/foundation. You may hate him, but he and his money have paid far more into the pie than the slice they get out of it.
Rich asshole number two spends between 70-90 hours a week juggling his portalet services, plumbing crews, well crews, septic crews, and equipment rentals. He also has an AGI of 500k with the same federal income taxes.
Rich asshole number 3 was a cop out of high school, knocked out college part time on the side, then law school on the side, works 60-80 hours a week and now has an AGI of 500k and say the same 110k federal income taxes.
Rich asshole number 4 spent a couple of decades working 120 hours a week, and now works zero hours a week with an AGI of 500k and 110k federal taxes living off the passive income of his self service car washes, storage rentals, and couple of gas stations/convenience stores with macdonalds.
Rich asshole number five was a medic in the 82nd out of high school. He went to college on the GI Bill, crushed all the hard courses, got into a US MD med school, worked even harder, worked 80 or more hours a week for more years on top of that, and now is an ER doctor at a trauma center working 36-48 hours a week with the same 500/110 income/tax pattern.
Rich asshole number six won the lottery or accidentally came up with some retarded app or came up with an idea for software or whatever of absolutely no productive, significant, or concrete worth that for whatever reason, they are getting 500k a year and coughing up those taxes.
People are conditioned to hate them, envy them, etc. despite the taxes they pay, let alone all the state income, property taxes, etc. they pay on top of that. Despite the fact these are also the guys pumping a shit ton of cash into the small business owners and skilled people locally. This is what this country is about. You can be born to nobody high school dropouts with no family reputation, status, land, or wealth and literally live the Amercian dream.
They use the exact same roads, ambulances, fire departments, etc. as everyone else even though they are funding over half of it. They are likely freebies on the public schools and paying extra for private schools. Yet they should pay more than their fair share because they have more money? They are paying far more to get the same or less than everyone else.
That is Fhole communist bullshit.
My opinion is,
Don’t worry about the guys paying more taxes than you, they are putting more into the pie than you are. But not getting a bigger piece.
Worry about the people paying less taxes than you. They are getting more than their fair share. I put them in two categories. Those that work, but whose intellectual, educational, skills, and abilities are of a lesser value. I am cool with that. Not everyone is going to be a Navy SEAL out of high school, get picked to go to the Naval Academy, Fly Tomcats, then go to medical school, be a Navy Flight Surgeon, then get elected for the Navy Atronaut program. The physical, mental, motivational, and resilience bell shaped curves are real.
I do not have the same respect, tolerance, and coolness with those that don’t. Worry about the BS SSDI, section 8, welfare, EBT types and non citizens disproportionately needing the fire department, the ambulance, the police, clogging up the ER, causing the accidents, making your insurance higher, making you spend money on security systems, etc., etc, etc,
For the record, my opinion is ten percent federal and five percent total for state should be the limit. And that we should not have local, county, state, or federal deficit spending budgets. That has significant implications. Like, if you receive government benefits because you can’t support yourself, you’re on birth control, male or female, if you are serving life in prison- you get comfort care, not dialysis and open heart surgery- if you are demented and don’t know who are wear you are in a nursing home, you get dignity and comfort care, not multiple trips to the ER and ICU for the next five or ten years, if you are off in a high risk area preaching and giving out bibles and get rolled up, we don’t spend s couple of hundred million on a hostage rescue- if you need a couple of hundred thousand a year in special education where typical student annual costs are 5k, you get five thousand allotted- and a ton of other harsh things, and a lot of other reasonable things like sticking with the M4 and M9, not giving staff people making slides on a FOB PEQs and Eotechs, pork spending, refugee spending, etc.
America is like that drama laden, woe is me, it’s everyone else’s fault, dumpster fire of a shit bag friend or relative that everyone knows who is using their newest credit card to pay off the minimum interest payments on their six other maxed out credit cards.
I’ll be very upfront. I work in finance. Have for ten years. I understand the implications of what I am saying EXACTLY and with zero hesitation. I probably understand them more than most of my peers on the fiscal right. I do not care if that policy has a disparate impact. People complaining about a “disparate impact” on the poor are merely using a $20 word to say that they think it’s unfair to the poor to expect them to pay, as a percentage of their income, the same as everyone else. It’s not unfair. It’s the very definition of fair. It is as fair as fair can be. The fact is that being poor is a disparate situation to being middle class or even wealthy and the three groups will never have the same view on tax policy. You could tax someone making half a million a year at 50% back to dollar number one and the “impact” on that person will be less than a 5% tax on a person making $20,000. If you want to have an equality of impact you can either eliminate taxes all together, or take everything from everyone. That’s how you eliminate disparity. Neither of those things will happen.
Does a flat tax tighten the belt on the guy/gal making $40,000 who was only paying a net effective rate of 7%, at least a bit more than the guy making $80,000? $160,000? 320,000? You bet your ass it does. That’s OK! This notion that we need to coddle everyone is nauseating. It’s class warfare to think that you can not teach people to expect to contribute. When people contribute they might actually start caring where their money is going!
As I already said, the simplification in accounting costs alone would literally make “raises” for every working American possible and you would see take home pay rise. I didn’t say that we would be getting rid of FICA (which is where most people claim the funding gap comes up). In fact I have always said that we need to eliminate the income cap on FICA payroll taxes while dropping the employer portion of the tax. That 7.65% that employers pay is a hidden tax on jobs that could/should be rolled right into the employees pay. Most people in America are unaware that they cost their employer 7.65% more than their salary in taxes. Just by having a job. The system would be better funded overnight and voila, another accounting function becomes easier for employers lowering costs.
It has been said in this thread already and I will reiterate it: The USA spends far too much money on BS and social engineering. Hiding taxes from employees and handing out phony “tax refunds” to people who paid little or even nothing into the system all year. It’s time for transparency and honesty.
How about ZERO payroll deductions. You send a check every month to the US Treasury for your bill. Heck, I’ll give you a progressive system even though it makes me want to vomit.
0-20K - 0%
20-60K - 10%
60-120K - 15%
120K-Bezos Money - 20%
But every person out there sends in their taxes themselves or they go straight to jail. You’d see things changing overnight. AT&T/Sprint/Verizon would be overwhelmed with the calls to DC about spending policies.
I may earn a very comfortable income, but I spent years studying (and was broke the whole time knowing that the ends justified the means) and I now keep that level by working my behind off. I’m typing this at 3:10 AM because I was up a hair earlier than my normal 4AM. I’ll head to the gym in 15 minutes or so, run a 10K this morning because I like my pants fitting looser and hard work is how you keep doing that as you get closer to 40 than 30, then I will go to my office and work somewhere between ten and eleven hours. May not take a lunch. Lot going on today. The majority of people earning higher incomes work harder than I do most days. It’s about damn time we stopped punishing success, or at least made sure that everyone had some skin in the game.