Ranting to /dev/null

Flat taxes

It's been a longstanding argument of conservatives that a flat income tax is more just than a graduated one. The idea of a graduated income tax is to place more of the burden of taxation on the rich, so that they pay a greater portion of their income than the other 99% of the country. Well, this does seem to be true, since the top 7% of income earners (those stating $75k or more) paid more than 51% of the income taxes collected by the government in 1992. Things have not changed appreciably since. But the real kicker is that they paid almost all of the capital gains tax, which stands at 20% or 28%, depending on how long you wait to take the gain. That's not as high as the 34% income tax for their bracket, but still higher than the 15-20% that most of us pay.

So if we introduce a flax tax, what's going to happen is that the "rich" (realizing that you only have to earn $75k to be consider such) are going to wind up paying a bit less than they were, as their income is taxed less, but most of the rest of us are going to pay a hell of a lot more. If you earn more than $200k a year, you're probably not getting most of it in cash, which would be taxed at 35%, you're getting a lot of stock and like negotiables, which can only be taxed at capital gains rates. If you earn under $43k, your bracket just jumped from 15% to 20%, and you're paying an additional $1.5-2k. Whee.

So all of you out there arguing for a flat tax, think about it for a bit. In principle, I'm in favor, because I think that there's something appropriate about everying contributing an equal portion of their income. But in practice, you've got to be kidding. The current tax structure would make a flat tax less just than our current setup. The rich are paying most of the taxes in the country. They're already being squeezed. A flat tax wouldn't affect them hardly at all, but would really, really affect the rest of us.