Mitt Romney asked - - -?

Question

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney asked in Yahoo Answers about improving our income tax program; quote –

How can we change the tax code to ease the burden on our families and promote growth and innovation?

There were a number of good answers but I never had a chance to respond. How does this sound to you?

I think it is time for a flat tax. Using the last five years as a base, determine what the real tax amount was for each taxable category. We do not pay the actual tax base but reduce taxes using various exemptions and write offs. Unfortunately we do not all get the same benefits, have the same ability to pay high paid tax lawyers to reduce our taxes, or have benefit of all the tax loop holes. After identifying the “Average Tax” actually paid the IRS should establish that as the amount of taxes we pay. There would be no exemptions for personal taxes except for medical insurance and catastrophic medical costs. A person could gain the catastrophic medical exemption for themselves or a member of their family or through a certification that they paid for the catastrophic medical needs of another person.
This would probably not cut too deeply into the tax income required by the government to fund necessary programs. It would make tax payers more honest and reduce the burden of doing taxes and letting select people get away without paying any tax.
I also think people should be taxed based on their accepted category. A person earning more than $500,000.00 per year should have to separately claim any money gained through bonuses, performance awards or whatever and be taxed at a separate rate of no less than 60% of the additional. Those people who are then paid millions of dollars a year would pay personal taxes like anyone else but would have to pay a separate tax on excessive income not actually considered as wages; some have recorded earning of more than a million dollars a day, many over a million a month. This usually occurs in corporations where many people are working at minimum or near minimum wages.
I would also suggest a national sales tax of no more than 2% on everything but food, medical, gasoline and heating fuel. This is a fair tax, you pay on what you buy; for those who pay $12,000.00 for a car they pay far less tax than the person who can afford and does buy a $65,000.00 car, and neither has a loop hole to escape the tax.

Answer 1

I agree with you about the flat tax, it is time to get rid of our counter-productive over-complicated tax code.

Answer 2

A flat tax is a LOUSY idea. The rate would need to be around 25% - 27% to equal the revenue from the current graduated income tax. Only the wealthy pay net taxes that high. If you give the wealthy a tax break like that, the burden must be transferred elsewhere. That would leave it up to the middle class or the poor.

If you think that a flat tax would be a great idea, figure out what it would do to you. Take your gross income from your tax return and add back any tax preference items such as retirement account contributions and pre-tax medical insurance. Now apply the 25% rate to that and compare that amount to the Total Tax line on your return. If you save money that way, congratulations, you are very wealthy. If you're like most of us, you will see a MAJOR tax increase.

Sales taxes are the worst of all possible taxes. They disproportionately affect the poor who must pay much more of their total income for essential goods and services. The wealthy don't spend anywhere near the proportion of their total income that the poor do. Sales taxes violate the first rule of taxation: Make sure that the taxpayer can afford to pay the tax! Sales taxes should be permanently banned.

The tax code does need to be simplified, but neither a flat income tax nor any more sales taxes are the answer. Period!

Answer 3

The federal income tax should be able to be calculated on an index card by every taxpayer. That would truly be a simple, and flat tax.

Answer 4

idont now wut u sed