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what bull , just more airy-fairy anti-tax screed with no suggestions of alternatives.
http://blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-j...-income-taxes/This is America’s 100th year for individual income tax, a system as out of touch with our era as digital music is with the hand-cranked Victrola music players of 1912. It is also the 26th year of the Reagan-era reform for both personal and corporate tax, a grand design now buried under special-interest favors.
With U.S. elections in November, and the George W. Bush tax cuts due to expire at the end of 2012, it’s time for a debate that goes beyond ginning up anger over taxes and the superficial issue of tax rates.
It’s time to consider whether to get rid of income taxes, personal and corporate. What are the strengths and weaknesses of our current system? Should we tax individual and corporate income — or something else?
We need to think about it. Whatever systems we consider, we should weigh up what it takes to raise the necessary revenue along with such other attributes as minimal compliance cost, leakage and economic distortion.
Times change. Tax systems must change with them or else their lubricating effect turns to sand, wearing down the gears of commerce.
Just as the Industrial Revolution transformed a nation of farmers and mechanics into a land of factory hands and office workers, so too the digital revolution and globalization are fundamentally remaking society.
We need for our tax system to serve our 21st century civilization and its needs, including the costs of aging infrastructure and an aging population, costs that will be borne one way or another.
what bull , just more airy-fairy anti-tax screed with no suggestions of alternatives.
boutons declares against tax reform
boutons knows that "tax reform" is always smokescreen and lies behind which is the 1% cutting taxes on themselves and raising taxes on the 99%.
didn't read anything, I see. you're as bad as WC and DarrinS.
I read both of the pieces, WH, and while it seems impossible for a reasonable person to disagree with Johnston's premises, as well as his call for a national discussion, it seems almost naive to suggest that it can go anywhere in the poisoned atmosphere that is current American discourse.
I mean, how many committees and task forces have recognized the validity of Johnston's
premises, addressed them, and promptly been ignored by both sides of the political aisles in washington?
It is easy to say we ought to fix it, and so hard to come up with plans that do not create major dislocations in the economy at one place or another. For example, the Bowles-Simpson plan was fair in that it 'gored everybody's ox'. But it was a non-starter because, among other things, it called for a reduction or removal of the mortgage-interest-deduction
for middle class families. The impact of a move like that on an already reeling housing market was unthinkable.
So...nobody thought about it.
When each party's avowed goal is to stop any program that the other party wants to advance, what possible use is there is attempting to come up with yet another plan?
I honestly believe that a flat tax might be nice, except that the suggestion for one is usually accompanied by calls for removing deductions that lobbyists will put right back in.
"removal of the mortgage-interest-deduction for middle class families."
it was not specific to middle class.
Johnston's ideas are mostly OK, which is exactly why UCA and 1% will (continue to) pay enough to keep them from being implemented.
"And what about corporate tax accounting costs"
GE's "corporate tax accounting costs" of 1000 people in its tax department pays off extremely well in greatly reduced/no income taxes.
Many of us have been advocating for about 10 years now, a consumption tax, rather than our current productivity tax.
the ongoing conversation can change the common sense. if the R's and D's continue to ignore the common sense of the people, an opening might be created for a third party.
Not bloody likely, admittedly, but not impossible either. Giving in to despair certainly isn't the answer.
A viable 3rd party will never happen, until most states require a 50%+1 win, with runoff voting.
Let's not pretend like both parties are equally to blame.
They are both to blame. I would disagree on the equal part, but that's a different discussion.
One major reason they will never change the tax system, to make it better for us, is because they lose power over us.
why not?
both are ing horrible
we deserve other choices. red or blue, we end up with purple assholes either way.
That badly bruised huh?
theres fkn nothing wrong with the current system
if you want low paid workers to pay their share of tax, all you have to do is lift the minimum wage law...just enough to pushed them over the first income bracket where they are force to pay taxes...
if you want to get rid of companies outsourcing its fkn simple, if they want to operate in ur economy...raise fkn tariffs on imports and income derived from overseas tax higher, so these clowns are either forced to bring back manufacturing and investments stays in the country
"all you have to do is lift the minimum wage law"
conservatives and businessmen scream bloody murder, ain't gonna happen at federal level, but some progressive states and cities have lifted it, eg, in SFO now over $10
Ever hear Repugs, who defunded the IRS by several $100M, and conservatives ing about this?
Unpaid taxes: IRS report says $450 billion owed
People and businesses underpaid their taxes by an estimated 17 percent in the most recent year studied, meaning they failed to send the government $450 billion it was owed,
The study covered 2006, the most recent for which the IRS said it had data available. The amount of underpaid taxes far exceeded the size of the entire federal budget deficit at the time.
After IRS audits and other enforcement efforts, non-compliance shrank to 14 percent, leaving the final amount of unpaid taxes at $385 billion.
That is still larger than the budget deficit for fiscal 2006, which was $248 billion. Fiscal years begin in October of the previous year.
Altogether, the IRS estimates it was owed nearly $2.7 trillion in taxes in 2006.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories...#ixzz1irWceBlP
Added to that the legal loopholes and tax expenditures for UCA and the wealthy, and we're talking about real money.
And not a peep from the Repugs and conservatives.
Are you certain that it reflects despair and not an appreciation of the economy of effort?
Crying that things are wrong doesn't seem to advance the proposition much either.
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