[glesica]

> Even showing no understanding of basic math when deduction + flat rate taxes are suggested.

As a left-winger, my views and yours probably aren't that far off. I would be fine with a flat tax (that was actually collected from everyone) and a large deductible. Even more so if it was coupled with a meaningful basic income guarantee.

The problem is that I don't actually believe politicians when they say that is what they will do. With all the talk about "job creators", it really, truly sounds as though the modern GOP actually wants a regressive system where the rich pay almost nothing and there is no deductible because the poor need to pay their "fair share" (whatever that means).

So it isn't that we don't understand math. My preferred tax code probably looks surprisingly similar to your preferred tax code, I just don't trust any of your politicians to actually move us in that direction (and for the record, it's not like I trust HRC to do any better).

[protomyth]

> the modern GOP actually wants a regressive system where the rich pay almost nothing and there is no deductible because the poor need to pay their "fair share"

None of the information I've seen posted for alternate tax systems by conservatives / GOP have ever had anything like that. That is something I hear a lot from papers that lean left, but is not the reality of any of the plans. Even the sales tax-based plans take great pains to make it easy on lower income folks. I just see it as more bad math.

I don't believe politicians will change the tax system because it is a powerful tool to impose their will and gain campaign contributions. Its a basic self-interest thing which explains the majority of politics.

[glesica]

But have any Republican elected officials actually put these policies into action? I mean, let's take Scott Walker. What has he done in Wisconsin? Seems like a lot of giveaways to the wealthy and not much else. This despite having a pretty solid mandate as mandates go these days (given that he survived a recall).

There are lots of reasonable-sounding proposals on various topics on both sides of the aisle (mostly from think tanks). The important thing is what happens when a party actually gets into government.

[jerrac]

> ...the poor need to pay their "fair share"

The basic idea is that the Government should treat everyone equally. Treating someone differently because they have a lower income than others is discriminatory. Just as treating someone with a higher income differently is discriminatory.

Plus, as soon as you open the law up to treating people differently based on some arbitrary criteria, you open it up to corruption. A few "bribes" here and there, and suddenly this company is part of a group that gets special treatment. Or this rich person is able to avoid paying extra taxes because of some loophole created because the Government treats some group differently.

Thus, it's not about the "poor" paying their fair share. It's about everyone paying their fair share.

[sdenton4]

Treating someone differently because they have a lower income than others is discriminatory.

Wealth is not a protected class; unlike gender, race, and religion, we don't have a legal mandate to avoid making decisions based on a person's wealth.

It's about everyone paying their fair share.

What does 'fair' mean, though? Another 'fair' scheme might be that everyone pays the same raw amount (rather than a fixed proportion of their income). After all, isn't it discriminatory to include a person's income in the formula for how much one should pay? Our tax code then looks like:

Tax(person) = requiredRevenue / nPopulation

Unfortunately, this ends up requiring poor people to pay more than they actually generate, requiring government to throw the poor in jail for tax evasion and tax more to cover the cost of the prisons.

Ok, so we should be allowed to use a person's income as a parameter to the tax equation. The 'flat' tax scheme is to use a formula like:

Tax(person) = fixedRatio x person.Income

The fixed ratio can again be figured out by looking at total income of the population and the required revenue.

Two major criticisms (amongst many): a) The marginal utility of money is greatly increased when you don't have much of it. A 15% tax on $20k a year will lead to eviction, hunger and health problems, creating social ills that we'll need government programs to deal with. Or they'll just not pay the tax, so again with the prisons. And again, the overall tax needs to be increased to deal with a stupid choice in the tax code. This is inefficient and arguably unfair.

b) Furthermore, if we don't want to punish the poor for being poor, we have to reduce the ratio, meaning we greatly reduce investment in infrastructure, education, etc, mainly as a result of undertaxing the wealthy to avoid punishing the poor. This also seems hella backwards.

So maybe we end up with something like:

Tax(person) = min(0, r_0 + r_1 person.Income + r_2 (person.Income - baseIncome)^2)

with r_i fixed coefficients. So now we have four parameters to choose (or more, if we want a more general polynomial). And suddenly this requires real policy decisions to be made with some nuance...

So to me, it comes down to a question of whether we want to over-simplify the question of how to fund government - negatively impacting either a broad class of the population or drastically degrading the services provided by government - or whether we trust a segment of the civil service to do something a bit more nuanced.

I come down on the 'fix the fucking government' side, personally.

[tptacek]

I don't see how you can get a fair flat tax, once you take into account transfer payments and entitlements that benefit lower-income people. I think you can make government's intake look fair with a flat tax, but that the inevitable outcome of that will be a system that lowers the burden on the wealthy by doing fewer things for the poor.

I don't think the complexity of the tax system is really that much of a problem. And for the past few years, I've been getting a face-full of the system in all its complex and frankly idiotic glory. I think it's fine that the system kind of screws people like me, and also benefits accountants and a tax preparation industry. We can afford it.

[protomyth]

"I don't think the complexity of the tax system is really that much of a problem."

The fact that TurboTax exists means the complexity of the system is a problem. For the average citizen to need a program to attempt to follow the law and still not get all the deductions owed points to a problem. The fact that the programmers at TurboTax have screwed up in recent years and cost people money and made them not comply with the law says the system is too complex.