I'm still all for a flat tax.

I'm still all for a flat tax.

I am too, as long as it's a flat tax on each share of corporate stock traded.

That article gave me a headache. GO TURBO TAX.

/refund is already spent
//on farking medical bills

My key problem with a flat tax is that money's value doesn't scale linearly.

For a simple illustration, compare $10 and $10,000. By simple artithmetic, we'd say that $10Gs are 1,000 times greater than $10, but the buying power of $10Gs is far more than that simple linear comparison. With $10Gs, there are investment opportunities that can increase the value of that money more rapidly than I could do with $10. Each power of ten added to the numeric value adds some percentage greater than that to the actual value of money.

Second issue with the flat tax- let's say the cost of living is $5,000. Someone who's making $10,000 a year pays half of that to simply live. But they also pay (based on how much of my income went to taxes this year) 25% of that ten grand to taxes, leaving them with, at the end of the year, $2500 disposable income.

If someone were making $100,000 a year, they shell out that $5,000 in living expense. We take $25,000 out and they're left with $70,000 in disposable income. They retain 70% of their yearly income, and the poor sucker just scraping by only retains 25%- how is that a fair and judicious tax arrangement?

Better is a consumption tax (ie. sales tax), wherin essentials are not taxed, and various luxuries are taxed very steeply.

misled didn't you hear h&r block is in trouble with the IRS for tax errors going back to 2004?

/not kidding

ExcessNeckSkin: Let me fix that up for you. I like the general outline, but I want to cut that power from the Federal Government. Let's abolish Federal Taxation altogether, and instead, require the Fed to get money from the individual states. Then each state can pass the tax law that is best suited to that state- and in my state, I'd go for a consumption oriented tax- but not a flat one. I'm sorry, but a jetski should rape you on taxes, a new computer, not so much.

bcp01scu05: Isn't it amazing how royally farked up our economy would be with too much meddling with the tax system. That's why I'm in favor of defederalizing it. The big down side- you'll get border hoppers buying their big expensive luxury products in another state, but then again- the state could easily close those loopholes with other taxes.

ExcessNeckSkin: National Sales tax of about 25%. No other taxes of any kind (local, state, federal, SS, vehicle, property, etc.).

Yep - lots of pitfalls to that plan, but I still like it. And, as an added bonus, no more IRS.

That would pretty much destroy our economy. Our economy is demand-driven, and if you reduce the demand for goods and services you reduce the suppliers' incentive to supply them. It sounds nice and fair and everyone hates the IRS, but it simply wouldn't work.

The demand-driven nature of our economy actually is the best argument for progressive income taxes. The reason: lower income people spend their money, and higher income people invest it. Doing what you can to keep the income of poorer people at a reasonable level (through minimum wage laws and progressive taxation) helps keep the economy strong. They'll spend most every dime they make and that money is spent many more times than money earned by top income earners. The more they demand the more good investment opportunities are available for the high income people.

ExcessNeckSkin: you can work that around. I mean, the Fed tax can be population based, somehow structured akin to representation in the House. While more populous states would bear the brunt, they've got more people to shoulder the load.

j z: Ask my fiance. She got married and divorced in the course of a year (silly accident, funny story, okay not really). She's lived in two states, had two jobs and did a little contract work, and has changed residences three times. There's a buttload of deductible moving expenses, and other breaks she can get, but she doesn't know them.

Thanks to the submitter...you just saved us a couple hundred bucks on our taxes. I followed links within the story, determined that HELL YEAH we can take our kid as a deduction. We'd thought he was too old.

Behold, the power of FARK...