Eliminate the personal income tax. Everyone in personal tax side of HR Block and IRS can find some other career which is useful. Rake the beaches or something.
Rich folks only need so many mansions, yachts and designer sweat pants. This would further shift the burden of taxes onto lower income folks who spend 100% of what they earn.
The IRS could just present a form behind a login with an itemized fully calculated tax return with an accept? "yes" / "no". They already have all the information they need, and already do the work when checking returns for errors.
Taxes are a pain because both, corporate capture of government by powerful tax preparation companies and also because a certain political ideology wants paying taxes to be as unpleasant as possible to make the concept of taxes as unpopular as possible.
> Rich folks only need so many mansions, yachts and designer sweat pants. This would further shift the burden of taxes onto lower income folks who spend 100% of what they earn.
This is a feature not a bug of that plan. There’s no amount of tax that’s too low when the answer to “How much do you need to be happy?” is more.
Well when tax is zero and there is no military to protect your assets thereby making them worthless as they are stolen. So perhaps there is a "too low"
Flat tax wouldn't solve the fundamental problem, which is making people calculate their own taxes.
In the vast majority of countries with personal income tax, everything is automatic and individuals don't need to do anything. Political parties in the US have an incentive to make things as complicated as possible to trick people into thinking ideas like a flat tax would be helpful.
I would support federal sales tax (exclude uncooked food at grocery stores and some base amount of home energy use) if federal personal income tax is abolished and if sales tax is implemented and enforced by States (like the current road fuel tax which States collect and send part to feds).
Can't reply to a nearby comment, so -- few rich people have taxable personal income because they either don't receive W-2 income or they hire people to structure and pursue the deductions.
In other words, yacht owners are rarely rich people and instead are owned by companies (controlled by rich people) so it is a business expense.
Eliminate the personal income tax. Everyone in personal tax side of HR Block and IRS can find some other career which is useful. Rake the beaches or something.