01-04-2019, 05:10 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-04-2019, 05:14 PM by CaptainHenreh.)
(01-04-2019, 04:56 PM)G.Irish Wrote: If we talk about how taxes should be structured differently or reduced there are plenty of solutions that people like. Simplifying the tax code and taxing consumption more directly or something like Fairtax would be interesting to see how it plays out.
I honestly don't think people would be much happier with use/consumption taxes though. Truth is that people just hate paying taxes and if you told them no income tax but now every product has a 30% VAT and you have to pay more directly for services you use, people would hate that too. I think it would take a drastically restructured government and country for it to work in a way that people would really be happy with.
Elimination of personal property taxes (by literal constitutional amendment) is my number one beef. That shit is B-A-N-A-N-A-S. If I own Real Property then I own it, period, and fuck you very much. I know there's no federal PP tax, but the legislatures that passed assessed value taxes should be literally tarred and feathered. PP *and* a state income tax? Well you're just fucking me coming AND going, aren't you?
Elimination of the income tax and adding a 36% VAT (although when you consider payroll taxes you're probably looking at closer to 50%) to non-essential goods and services would be fine with me. It'd be an adjustment, but it's something that could be easily phased in, in pieces, and if, as Chris advocates, those with sufficiently low incomes are exempt, I think this would be more equitable.
But I know it's never going to happen, we have what we're gonna, but I can still make philosophical points.
(Sidenote, any one of you keyboard commandos could have come in with a "Taxation isn't theft because you have no right to your pre-tax income, which is the market's payment to the government for the value that you added to it, and not actually yours to begin with" instead of trying some weird "it's not theft because it's legal" craziness. Philosophy matters in philosophical arguments.)
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