A flat tax question?

Question

Since goverment and Corperations are addressing our
personal human shortcomings and defects, and want us to be
over taxed and restricted starting with smoking, over weight
Why not a flat tax for all, Pride,Greed,Lust,Anger,Gluttony,
Envy,Sloth & Lies.

Answer 1

Haha! Good idea! The falt tax needs to happen, 20% of what you make every year, no deductions would def. payoff in America! But the reason for people wanting to tax what you mentioned is because it is a financial drain to society, whereas the other deadly sins are not... or are they? LOL.

Answer 2

Good for you! However; Why not just a simple 10% flat tax period? if each person, each business, each corporation and all foriegn investors paid 10% of their earnings, regardless of their losses, in a few years there would be no need for taxes every year and we'd be required to pay them every third year at the soonest.

Large corporations get to deduct their losses from their incom total and that's BS. If a person cannot deduct their losses from their income neither should a company. What really stinks about the system is that a company is considered living - hah - I've never seen a "company" at a dinner table across from me in any resteraunt. A company is simply one or more individuals, like you and me and therefore each individual owner that reaps any financial benefit from their company's existence should pay 10% of that benefit and as a whole the company should pay 10% . You can't have a loss without having some sort of money to begin with. Please don't tell me that AT&T lost 2 Billion dollars in profit one year - heck, AT&T was still able to pay it's owners a considerable amount of money and was able to pay it's employees so why couldn't it pay it's 10%? Oh, that's right, it's because the owners would have gotten less money. Guess what, that also means their 10% would have been less as well. What's $100,000,000.00 to a company that makes 1 billion dollars a year? It still has $900,000,000.00 to spread between it's owners and employees and still keep running and make another billion the next year. And even if they lost $300,000,000.00 in one year plus paid $100,000,000.00 in 10% taxes it still leaves it with $600,000,000.00 million to divy up and reinvest. What in the world could I do with $600,000,000.00? Left with that meager amount I'd probably ask for a tax break or for some government agency to bail me out.

Answer 3

Sometimes we attempt to offer simple answers to very complex issues. A flat tax on pride, greed, lust, anger, glutton, envy, sloth & lies may be a good idea but not to replace the income tax.

Answer 4

As for taxes on business, corporations, etc...what you must keep in mind is that those entities DO NOT PAY TAXES. Only PEOPLE pay taxes. Taxes to a business are nothing more than overhead, just like their electric bill, lease, etc. They pass it on to individuals in the form of higher prices, lower wages, or lower dividends to investors. What we need is a national sales tax such as the Fairtax Bill currently pending in Congress. This gives you a one-time highly visible tax to replace our intrusive, cumbersome, and incomprehensible income tax system. Study the details and read the Bill at www.fairtax.org.

Answer 5

A flat tax would shift much of the tax burden from high income to low and middle income people, but still would not do anything to tax the underground economy - sounds like a real bad idea to me.

Answer 6

au contraire, Martin.

flat tax is a poor idea.


America, and other countries, should abolish income taxes completely and switch to taxing consumption instead. A national value added tax of the same percentage [17 to 20 percent] would yield enough revenue while increasing people's income and thus reducing poverty.


All taxes act to reduce the quantity of the activity taxed. This is covered in Economics 001 at university.

you decide ... do you want to reduce the amount of work done, or would it be better to reduce the amount of consumption done?

Answer 7

Good luck coming up with bills for pride, anger, and envy taxes.