The fair tax?

Question

Will it actually be fair or will it still favor the very rich so that they do not have to pay their fair share as it is now? Don't give me that 5% of the people pay 95% of the taxes either because it just isn't true.

Answer 1

I must have gotten you going Answerman. Me and my husband have three businesses we own and run presently. I have a lot of input over the the tax codes that effect our businesses, and we have stocks and other investments also. A flat tax is currently in place according to my CPA with the standard deductions, since most of the general public doesn't qualify for the tax breaks. These shelters, if they were removed would cause the rich to have to actually pay a fair share. With the shelters over investments most of the wealthy only pay around 15% income tax, where as the rest of the population pays close to 27% with the standard deduction of the 1040. So in reality the lower and middle class still pays the majority of Americas taxes by population.

Answer 2

It is true that 5% pay 95% of the taxes. I am a business owner. My income is greater than when I worked for someone else, but so are my taxes. I pay 17 times the tax I paid as an employee. The more you make, the more they take.

Answer 3

What would really be fair is to cut out the income tax. Criminals (drug dealers and prostitutes) don't pay that. And they make a lot of money. Just put heavy taxes on what we buy. That way you get everyone to pay. The more things you buy, the more tax money you pay. That way you get the rich (cause they buy more and expensive items) and you get the drug dealers and other criminals because they buy a lot of stuff also. Fair? I think so.

Answer 4

The FairTax was created by first asking the American people what they wanted out of a tax system, and then having a team of respected economists design a tax system that met those demands. The FairTax replaces the income tax and all other federal taxes with a national consumption tax. The FairTax is levied only once, at the point of purchase on new goods and services. The simplicity of the FairTax frees Americans from our current overwhelming tax code and unshackles the U.S. economy.


The FairTax:
Abolishes the IRS
Closes all tax loopholes and brings fairness to taxation
Maintains our current Social Security and Medicare benefits
Brings transparency and accountability to tax policy
Allows American products to compete fairly
Reimburses the tax on purchases of basic necessities
Enables retirees to keep their entire pension
Enables workers to keep their entire paycheck

Answer 5

Actually that is true.

And yes I do think the fair tax would be fair, but all of those losers at the IRS probably wont think so, they might actually have to go find a real job.


EDIT - you can get the tax statistics straight from the IRS website as to how much each group of taxpayers contributes.

Answer 6

I am concerned that the fair tax will encourage a LOT of black market activity.
Also, I am concerned about how they will actually implement the reimbursement for low income people (the solution for a greater % of income going for taxable items). Seems that this will create another bureaucracy
It could work but I'm still kind of skeptical.

Answer 7

The aspects of the current tax code that "favor" the very rich are the itemized deductions. Eliminate those, and everone will start to pay their fair share. It is morally indefensible that someone who does not pay into the system has the ability to redirect wealth from one citizen to another. That is tyranny of the minority.

Answer 8

Sorry to burst you little class warfare bubble, but your wrong:

The reality is that the wealthy pay almost all of the federal income tax and there is clear and compelling evidence that our tax system-especially its misguided redistributive elements-impose a heavy cost in terms of growth that is ultimately paid by the nonwealthy in the form of lower productivity and, hence, lower wages and incomes.

Interestingly, the latest Internal Revenue Service data on distribution of the tax burden were released the same day Tritch's tirade appeared. They show that the top 1 % of taxpayers paid 34.3% of all federal income taxes in 2003, although they earned just 16.8% of the adjusted gross income. The top 5% of taxpayers paid more than half of all federal income taxes, the top 10% paid two-thirds, and the top half of taxpayers paid 96.5%, meaning that the bottom half paid just 3.5%.

Another 1RS report decomposed the top 1% and found that the top 10% of the top 1% (the top 0.1%) increased their share of all federal income taxes from 7% in 1980 to 15.3% in 2003. These 129,000 tax filers earned 7.6% of the income and paid an average tax rate of 23.6%. This came to $114.6 billion-four times more than all the taxes paid by the 64 million taxpayers in the bottom 50%-who paid an average tax rate of 2.9%.

I would be curious to know just how much more Tritch thinks the wealthy ought to be paying? Back in the good old days (from her point of view) when Jimmy Carter was President and the top statutory tax rate was 70% (versus 35% today), the top 1% of taxpayers paid only 19.7% of all federal income taxes. In other words, although their marginal tax rate has fallen by 50%, their tax share has almost doubled.

According to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, we pay a very heavy price for the heavy taxation of saving, investment, corporations and estates that Tritch strongly favors. It found that the efficiency cost of the tax system-the output that is lost over and above the tax itself-is between 2% and 5% of the gross domestic product. In short, we lose between $240 billion and $600 billion every year just because of the way we raise taxes.

Mr. Bartlett is a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis and former Treasury Department deputy assistant secretary under President George H.W. Bush.

Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Oct 17, 2005
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved

Answer 9

The only fair tax is no tax! The Boston tea party!

Answer 10

OK...pay buy what you make!!!