How much should your income be taxed

Published on September 23, 2005 By Island Dog In Politics

I see the useless class warfare rants of the col about how the "evil rich" should support everyone in this country. I also was reading how Michael Moore said people should be taxed like 60% of their income. My question to everyone is, how much should your income be taxed?

I say no more than 15%.

Comments (Page 2)

sunwukong

on Sep 23, 2005

My preference is for a less cynical approach -- hope for transparency in government, i.e., first find out what essential services only the government provides and how much they actually cost. If that information is forthcoming and accurate, then we can let the accounting bookworms figure out how to structure a simple progressive/flat rate structure.

Barring that, then perhaps another approach would be to figure out a general "minimal cost of living" figure for various types of households (e.g., gross income, number of earners, number of kids, age of kids, etc.) and, based on population stats, figure out the rate structure such that:
- if they earn enough income, no family is taxed such that they take home less than the minimal cost of living
- families that earn more pay more in absolute tax dollars than families who are equivalent (e.g., kids, earners, etc.) but earn less
- no family pays more than a set rate (arbitrary?)

Otherwise, my family is comfortable despite the taxes we are currently paying though we're disatisfied with the way the various levels of government are run and the services they provide -- both from an efficiency/effectiveness point of view plus the general bloating everyone complains about.

Spc Nobody Special

on Sep 23, 2005

$34.12, no more, no less......$34.12

COL Gene

on Sep 23, 2005

No taxpayer would be paying 39% of their income after all the deductions etc. A person paying any substantial portion of their income at the 39% bracket would have a 7 figuar income per year. A person with a $1,000,000 income would have at least $700,000 after tax considering the deduction available. That is almost 20 times the GROSS Average income in this country. Cheney had taxable income in 2001 of $4,357,000 and paid 38% which left him after tax $2,701,000. In 2004, Cheney had taxable income of $1,743,000 and paid 21% which left him $1,7370,000 after tax. In 2001 after tax he made 80 times the average family gross income. In 2004 after tax he made 48 times the GROSS average income in America. It is hard to see how people like that have ANY problem with the old tax rates!

Texas Wahine

on Sep 23, 2005

COL: Don't you think it's WRONG to penalize people for being successful?

You say that $1,000,000 after taxes leaves $700,000...which is a crap load of money...but that still means that the person being taxed had to hand over to the government a whopping $300,000 that they earned.

Zoomba

on Sep 23, 2005

I'm, as a middle-of-the-road earner and nowhere near "upper middle class", forking over a grand total of about 20% of my income in taxes. Guess what? It still allows me to afford rent, utilities, a car, entertainment to some degree, food.... AND if I am smart, I can put away a nice chunk into savings every month.

A % flat rate is entirely reasonable and fair. It would in fact be lower than what many are paying out in taxes already.

bakerstreet

on Sep 23, 2005

How much is irrelavant if you look at the real problem with taxation. It is the exact same problem that caused the revolution which created America. We are not represented in terms of federal spending and taxation. We have no say whatsoever. No matter which waste of skin we send to represent us, they end up representing their party.

So, the question isn't how much we are taxed, but WHERE we are taxed. Most of our daily needs are at the state and local level, and our representitives at the state and local level are closer and more apt to be reached. In that light, the only way we can oversee spending and taxation is to take it out of the hands of the federal government.

When you do your budget at home, you don't look at your total expenses and decide whether to rob a 7-11. You look at what you spend and figure out where the waste is. We simply cannot do that at the Federal level. We aren't allowed by the very people who pretend to represent us.

So, until I my interests are represented, I don't think we should be taxed AT ALL.

Moderateman

on Sep 23, 2005

a simple flat federal tax of 15% NO LOOPHOLES everyone pays period.

Demosthenes Locke

on Sep 23, 2005

I think we should all be taxed $3.50

Texas Wahine

on Sep 23, 2005

About tree-fitty sound good to me.

ericseba

on Sep 23, 2005

No matter which waste of skin we send to represent us, they end up representing their party.

That's why I always tell people that you simly cannot vote for the "man", vote for the lesser evil of the parties.

If, God forbid, Hillary changed parties tomorrow, I would still vote for the republican candidate in 2008 even if ...ggassspp...it was her. That was hard to type.

Moderateman

on Sep 23, 2005

If, God forbid, Hillary changed parties tomorrow

if that happens I will join the whiter than white el supremo kill everyone but wasps party.

does that mean i will have to kill me ?

Chakgogka

on Sep 23, 2005

In a thread sometime back when someone mentioned the 'high' rates of tax in the UK, I looked into the matter and it seemed that on average the UK taxpayer was taxed at roughly the same rate - or even sometimes slightly lower - than in the US (Yes, I was surprised too. There are, of course, all kinds of variables, single/married, filing separately, age etc that make generalisations difficult).

Part of the reason is that every UK taxpayer has a 'personal allowance', a certain amount of money that they are allowed to earn without paying any tax on it (technically it is the band rated at 0%). This ranges from $8,690 to $12,818 depending on age [at today's exchange rate]. I believe the lowest tax band is the US is 10%. I must say that I like the idea of a 0% tax band! Virtually no-one lives at this level (and if they do, good luck to them), but we can all have a certain amount of income which is unquestionably and untouchably ours.

The UK tax system also has a list of 'non-taxable' income which surprisingly contains "National Lottery, and gambling prizes".

In addition VAT (value added tax) which is roughly the equivalent of sales tax (with the importance difference that it is already included in the price ticket, so what you see is what you pay) is NOT levied on a whole host of things. The following are all zero-vated for VAT: Food (other than purchased in a restaurant), clothing, books, drugs and medicines, train and bus tickets, insurance, postal services (except telegrams) education, health services and a lot of other things including land and (I'm sure I read this somewhere) gold.

Island Dog

on Sep 24, 2005

Col since you have avoided the real question and somehow brought Cheney into this let me ask again.

Since you are part of the class warfare movement. How much should each pay?

Low class
Middle class
Uppder class

And col, are you a socialist?

Island Dog

on Sep 26, 2005

Well?

ParaTed2k

on Sep 26, 2005

Why don't we just listen to all those who want Prs. Bush to be responsible for everything. All our paychecks should just go to him, after all isn't the "buck stops here" what we should expect from our president? ;~D

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