Happy Tax Day!!! Aren't you happy?

[davester]

What Speedy said. The highly regressive flat tax is by far the best way to enrich the already rich 1% who are powering our economy by harvesting their investments and to confiscate the hard-earned undeserved money that the middle class earns through hard work.

Buck wrote:
Flat tax is a great answer. The progressive tax system is grossly unfair. Loopholes, or tax deductions, need to disappear.

Watch Fox News much? You seem very confused and are talking out of both sides of your mouth. The presence of loopholes and tax deductions has nothing to do with whether a tax system is progressive or regressive (flat tax). Loopholes and deductions have been installed (by the rich folks who would love to have a flat tax system) to make the tax system less progressive, not more so.

[DinerDave]

[quote=robfilms]
i paid my taxes.

i'm not complaining.

where i live there is water, and roads, and teachers, and libraries, and a fire department and even some police.

i'm told there is also a navy, army, air force, marines and coast guard all looking out for my best interest.

i look around this wide wild world, and i can only imagine the number of people who would do anything if only they would be able to pay united states taxes.

ymmv

No one wants to pay taxes, but we realize it ia a necessary evil.

Dave

[DavidS]

I guess I need to finish up my taxes. I started doing them a month ago, but when I realized I owed money, I decided to wait until today. I prefer to give the government a bit on April 15 than get a check back and realize I've given them a tax free loan all year.

[sekker]

I don't mind the complex tax code. Computers are great at running the calculations.

I just want the net taxation to serve the goal for the long-term betterment of our country.

[Speedy]

Speedy wrote: please post the percentage of all taxes you paid last year. Include income taxes, FICA, Medicare, estimated sales taxes, license taxes (but not fees, Flat Taxers love fees), taxes on utilities, gas tax, property taxes, etc. Just the percentage paid compared to your gross income, not the actual tax in dollars, no need to disclose your $$ situation. You might be surprised at how little you actually pay. I won't be surprised at how little you actually paid because I know it isn't much compared to what you get.

Putting my taxes where my mouth is, I ran the numbers for a prior year. I included all the taxes I could remember. Car licenses, utility taxes, airfare taxes, property taxes, state income taxes, federal income and employment taxes, sales taxes, fishing license and gas tax. Some are estimates like sales tax and utility taxes. Jointly filing, we paid 17.5% of our gross wages, etc. in total local, state and federal taxes. Our income, including my social security, was just a bit over $90k which is much above average for our area.

[RAMd®d]

Could somebody explain exactly how a flat tax is regressive?

If there are no loopholes, no exceptions, no write offs, and everybody pays the same percentage, how does that make the rich even richer?

For those who can't tell or like to read into instead of just read, I'm asking a couple of straight forward questions.

I know just enough about taxes to complete my two forms on my own, the difference between a W-2 and a W4 (a lot of people don't know that much) and that's about it.

I can see that if you're rich, you can make more money with bigger investments, etc., but how does paying the same tax rate, without exception make that wrong?

A lot of people far more learned than me are for it, and a lot more learned people are against it.

So, what's the deal?

[vicrock]

Including all the taxes that I could find, we pay about 27%

[RAMd®d]

I got an unexpectedly, eminently satisfactory refund.

[Filliam H. Muffman]

You, minimum wage earner, make $15,000 a year, pay 9% tax, you have $13,650 left. Housing, food, transportation, medical cost $13,000. Net savings is $650. Your tax bill is 207% of your savings.

You, as an executive, make $250,000 a year, pay 9% tax, you have 227,500 left. Housing, food, transportation, medical cost $80,000. Net savings is $147,500. Your tax bill is 15% of your savings.

If the flat tax was 15%, the minimum wage person wouldn't be able to save anything but the executive would still be able to save $132,500. Progressive/Indexed with no loopholes is the fairest to people making less. The flat tax sounds good to 'middle class' or those who aspire to that because they will pay a little less. That's why billionaires keep pushing the flawed idea. Six Waltons have more wealth than the bottom 30% of Americans.

[Speedy]

vicrock wrote:
Including all the taxes that I could find, we pay about 27%

Congrats on being near the top of the income curve!