04-16-2015, 04:14 PM
RAMd®d wrote: It's just that I have never been able to wrap my head around the "you make more so you should pay more" tax model.
I'm having an Excedrin moment.
Time to Option-Cmd-Eject.
Perhaps a better way to look at things is not how much you pay in taxes, either as a percentage or in dollars, but how much you have left over after all taxes have been paid. The top marginal rate was once 91%+ but it was a rare person that paid the full amount and that person still had more money from income after taxes than anyone else.
We do have regressive flat taxes in many states via the sales tax. The struggling young couple with four kids buys a lot of groceries and pays a lot in sales tax on those groceries. The older wealthy couple can afford a much better, more expensive cut of beef than the young couple but in the end probably pays less total sales tax than the young couple when they go through the checkout. Same for clothing, nicer duds for the wealthy couple but they pay less sales tax overall than the young couple clothing four kids, even with hand me downs. So, what is fairer, the flat sales tax or a progressive income tax? Your call.
In the end, the rich will do just fine no matter the tax rate.