MortalWombat

Perhaps you didn't see the link I posted above, which shows that sales tax is precisely not fair.

Look at the table at the bottom of the page, which shows that the lowest 20% income group pay 6.7% of sales and excise tax as a share of income while the top 1% income group only pay 1.1% of sales and excise tax as a share of income.

Corey Hammer

Social security taxes are still regressive in that workers with lower wages pay a higher percentage that those who make above the cutoff point. Those above the cutoff point still get the same social security benefits.

Quote:

Also, sales tax is very fair because it is levied as money is spent. Rich People(tm) have more money to spend so they pay more sales tax. If someone who earned $1,000,000 pays 5% sales tax then they pay $50,000 a year. If someone who makes $20,000 a year pays 5% then they pay $1,000. How can it get more fairer than that unless you believe it is fair for Rich People(tm) to pay MORE taxes than the poor.

Spending is asymptotic. Who will spend a higher percentage of their income, someone who makes $50,000 a year or someone who makes $500,000?

In addition, according to Bush's own logic, a sales tax is an unfair double taxation since the money you're spending has already been taxed.
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Of course the above paragraph is a simple example, but it does illustrate that sales tax is one of the most fair taxes. That is unless your idea of fair is having Rich People(tm) grabbing their ankles. [/QUOTE]

Please. Take a look at graph described tax increases from 1981 to 1989...then tell me who grabbed whose ankles.

beausoleil

If it really is a double taxation of the same income that causes irritation, the solution is surely obvious. Abolish the tax on dividends, then increase tax on companies to raise the same amount of money. The dividends in question would then shrink to their current after-tax value. Alternatively, abolish tax on companies and levy it all on the dividends. Either way, no double taxation, no unfairness, no problem. Of course, you'd miss out on one of two sets of exemptions and loopholes. If that wouldn't work, I suggest then it isn't really the same money being taxed.

Or is it the fraction of income being removed in taxation that's the problem, rather than the mechanism by which it's calculated? Whether the fraction of the overall budget gained from taxing corporations and their dividends should shrink or grow is a different question from the 'fairness' or otherwise of the way it's calculated.

From a European perspective, it seems completely commonplace that the rich should pay a higher rate of income tax than the poor. From each according to his means and all that. It's not at all obvious that this is less fair than one-size-fits-all. Even in the US there's a level of income below which you pay no income tax, surely, which is the same principle. It's a gesture towards the notion of taxing disposable income after the needs of life have been met, rather than total income.

Zar

beausoleil (handsome sun?),

I think you capture what really matters here quite well.

beyelzu

it is wrong to have a higher tax rate for the rich. and then complain when those higher taxes get cut. the rich still pay more taxes then the poor. plus it is important to consider who the rich are. there is little proof that the same people are rich throuhout there lives. in fact because young people make less money and their salaries grow as they grow older, and a person's parents are likely to die when a person is around 50 during his prime earning years, in fact the "rich" are just the poor at a different stage in life. so the class warfare is really age warfare.

furthermore wealth redistribution is crap. there is little logical reason for it. from each according to his means, to each according to his needs is basic communism. my college roommate grew up in romania, he has seen communism, its not pretty. before you spout off this the rich need to help the poor nonsense, talk to someone that has seen real wealth distribution in action. its not pretty.

managalar

This is more stupid. Tax is a word, just like fee. You are not an island, and you are nothing but a clever ape without society. Voluntary, in many cases, is an illusion, because life isn�t free.

The primary education was not voluntary, it was paid for by fees. These fees were collected from people who live in our society, for the purpose of maintaining our society, as were the children forced into an education. You have a TINY voice in all of it, which is more than you had when your parents forced* you into existence.

*I see you, August Spies, suggesting on this thread and others, that the costs of life are a kind of forced coercion (�They are forced out of citizens.�). Your usage of �force� is ridiculous. Life in our society isn�t free, you have a tiny say in it, and you have little choice in it. It is the lack of desirable choices, which, I think, defaults you to saying that you�re �forced�. The people who live in this country, and pay the modest fees to live in this country, get a pretty decent deal.

Feather

Back the doublethink truck up here.

A corporation is a separate entity from the shareholders. It has legal standing and liability in a way that protects the shareholders should somebody bring a lawsuit up against the coporation. That is, in fact, the whole point of setting up a corporation: so that the personal wealth and freedom of the shareholders is protected from punitive action.

Dividends are more like wages paid out to the shareholders than merely a distribution of the coporation's profits.

It's not double taxation, in other words. The "person" of the corporation has "his" "income" (profits) taxed and then the persons the corporation "pays" (via dividends) have their incomes taxed. Separately.

99Percent

Yes, this is the main reason corporations are set up, but another reason is to be able to pool together capital from several people that an otherwise individual entrepreneur cannot do.

No, completely wrong. Dividends cannot be like wages because they can go in the negative when a company has lost money. Wages never go to the negative they are paid out on the basis of direct time and work carried out by the employees who put forth immediate value a wage can never be "minus".

It certainly is double taxation. If an individual puts up his own company he is taxed for the profit he makes and thats it (he can also be taxed if he makes wages from his own company but these are then deducted as expenses so it takes away from the bottom line and therefore there is less profit to be taxed then). OTOH an individual who invests in a corporation is taxed doubly because the corporation already paid the taxes for the profit gained and [then the individual must pay an additional "income" tax when he receives the dividends, and frankly thats just unfair. Its a big desincentive to invest capital because a corporation must make double amount of profits than usual in order to make it attractive.

99Percent

managalar:

There is a big difference between the word "tax" and the word "fee".

Taxes are obligatory as August Spies pointed. Fees are not.

In the case of public universities, they get their revenues from the taxation of everyone regardless if they send their kids to school or not. This is because the voters decided to give University education a definite value and a right for everyone who decides to go to college so they make it "free" for them, but in the end everyone is paying by force because its a tax you cannot escape from.

OTOH private schools get their income from fees from those parents who choose to send their kids to schools and they can even decide which schools to send depending on the ammount of fees and services offered. However this is entirely optional and they can freely decide to save on this expense and not pay any fees without worrying if they are going to go to jail.

Of course nowadays, most universities get a mixture of incomes, from both subsidies by the federal and state governments (from taxes) and fees depending if you are a citizen or resident of the state or if you are foreigner, or if you have scholarships, etc, which makes a big confusion but in the bottom line is that there are only two ways for them to get funded - either publicly through forced taxation or privately through voluntary payment of fees. (and private donations but thats an entirely optional thing too). But I think its worthwhile to understand the difference.

beyelzu

interestingly to note, historically black colleges receive on average around 70% of there operatiing expenses from federal grants. so all people are forced to pay for a university that many probably would not want to attend due a hostile political environment. also, i would like to go ahead and say, if you have been to college, i think that it is fairly obvious that multiculturalism is hostile to whites and men in particular. furthermore, these historically black colleges are hotbeds of such activity. so if a white man does not want to go to such a school, it can be for political not racial reasons.

just heading off any flames before they get started.