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An Idea For Taxes (US)

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Pozessed

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I think it may be easier for our states to be taxed as opposed to the citizens directly. I think the states should report their data to the IRS and the IRS should tax the states via how many people are employed and contributing to the state. Then the government could apply a tax to the state that reflects the working population.
So say Rhode Island has only 100 tax paying citizens and they all contributed 30% of their paycheck to federal institutions, i.e taxes, medicaid, social security. It would be up to the state to collect those funds from its citizens as opposed to the government in my exchange. The government would take it's 30% from the states budget as opposed to the citizens. The state could decide how to best earn this money, via taxes, or other means.
I think this may be a better idea than our current practice because as is the federal government is trying to do a job the states could already be doing for them. Any organization should have a trusted and efficient form of delegation. I allege that our current practice of collecting and distributing taxes could be better delegated if the states were the only entities paying the feds rather than each citizen. There would obviously have to be some provisions on how the states can and can not collect taxes, but I think there are laws and amendments already in place to safe guard most over reach of power.

Just a thought. Sorry if this has been discussed before, I didn't see anything similar when I did a search.
 
Pozessed said:
I think it may be easier for our states to be taxed as opposed to the citizens directly. I think the states should report their data to the IRS and the IRS should tax the states via how many people are employed and contributing to the state. Then the government could apply a tax to the state that reflects the working population.
So say Rhode Island has only 100 tax paying citizens and they all contributed 30% of their paycheck to federal institutions, i.e taxes, medicaid, social security. It would be up to the state to collect those funds from its citizens as opposed to the government in my exchange. The government would take it's 30% from the states budget as opposed to the citizens. The state could decide how to best earn this money, via taxes, or other means.
I think this may be a better idea than our current practice because as is the federal government is trying to do a job the states could already be doing for them. Any organization should have a trusted and efficient form of delegation. I allege that our current practice of collecting and distributing taxes could be better delegated if the states were the only entities paying the feds rather than each citizen. There would obviously have to be some provisions on how the states can and can not collect taxes, but I think there are laws and amendments already in place to safe guard most over reach of power.

Just a thought. Sorry if this has been discussed before, I didn't see anything similar when I did a search.
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this is a beautiful poem. is this james joyce?
 
Pozessed said:
I think it may be easier for our states to be taxed as opposed to the citizens directly. I think the states should report their data to the IRS and the IRS should tax the states via how many people are employed and contributing to the state. Then the government could apply a tax to the state that reflects the working population.
So say Rhode Island has only 100 tax paying citizens and they all contributed 30% of their paycheck to federal institutions, i.e taxes, medicaid, social security. It would be up to the state to collect those funds from its citizens as opposed to the government in my exchange. The government would take it's 30% from the states budget as opposed to the citizens. The state could decide how to best earn this money, via taxes, or other means.
I think this may be a better idea than our current practice because as is the federal government is trying to do a job the states could already be doing for them. Any organization should have a trusted and efficient form of delegation. I allege that our current practice of collecting and distributing taxes could be better delegated if the states were the only entities paying the feds rather than each citizen. There would obviously have to be some provisions on how the states can and can not collect taxes, but I think there are laws and amendments already in place to safe guard most over reach of power.

Just a thought. Sorry if this has been discussed before, I didn't see anything similar when I did a search.
Click to expand...

Yeah, let's disconnect the cost of paying taxes to teh Fed. gov't even more. IMO, we need to go 180 degrees in the other direction. Every taxpayer should be writing a monthly check to the gov't for thier taxes. No more payroll deductions, just a nice personal one on one relationship between the taxpayer and the gov't. Let's make the amount of money we pay every month in taxes a very personal thing. No automatic deductions either. You send a check to the gov't every month and write out that full amount you're paying in your handwriting. ...and that also means a separate check for SSI as well...
 
Pozessed said:
I think it may be easier for our states to be taxed as opposed to the citizens directly. I think the states should report their data to the IRS and the IRS should tax the states via how many people are employed and contributing to the state. Then the government could apply a tax to the state that reflects the working population.
So say Rhode Island has only 100 tax paying citizens and they all contributed 30% of their paycheck to federal institutions, i.e taxes, medicaid, social security. It would be up to the state to collect those funds from its citizens as opposed to the government in my exchange. The government would take it's 30% from the states budget as opposed to the citizens. The state could decide how to best earn this money, via taxes, or other means.
I think this may be a better idea than our current practice because as is the federal government is trying to do a job the states could already be doing for them. Any organization should have a trusted and efficient form of delegation. I allege that our current practice of collecting and distributing taxes could be better delegated if the states were the only entities paying the feds rather than each citizen. There would obviously have to be some provisions on how the states can and can not collect taxes, but I think there are laws and amendments already in place to safe guard most over reach of power.

Just a thought. Sorry if this has been discussed before, I didn't see anything similar when I did a search.
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That would be entirely unconstitutional.
 
faithful_servant said:
Yeah, let's disconnect the cost of paying taxes to teh Fed. gov't even more. IMO, we need to go 180 degrees in the other direction. Every taxpayer should be writing a monthly check to the gov't for thier taxes. No more payroll deductions, just a nice personal one on one relationship between the taxpayer and the gov't. Let's make the amount of money we pay every month in taxes a very personal thing. No automatic deductions either. You send a check to the gov't every month and write out that full amount you're paying in your handwriting. ...and that also means a separate check for SSI as well...
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I never truly felt the "pain" of taxes until I became self-employed and had to do that very thing.
 
Harshaw said:
That would be entirely unconstitutional.
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The 16th amendment should have been founded unconstitutional IMO. Which many others do as well considering our framers wanted to avoid direct taxes.
 
Pozessed said:
The 16th amendment should have been founded unconstitutional IMO. Which many others do as well considering our framers wanted to avoid direct taxes.
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An amendment, being duly made part of the Constitution, cannot, by definition, be unconstitutional.
 
Harshaw said:
An amendment, being duly made part of the Constitution, cannot, by definition, be unconstitutional.
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So if the government added an amendment that required all citizens in America to never speak to police and only be submissive to search and seizures, it is then constitutional?
By definition obviously, but not without contradicting previous amendments. And surely not without contradicting the idea that we are a free society.
 
Pozessed said:
So if the government added an amendment that required all citizens in America to never speak to police and only be submissive to search and seizures, it is then constitutional?
By definition obviously, but not without contradicting previous amendments. And surely not without contradicting the idea that we are a free society.
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If it contradicts anything previous, it supersedes. So yes, it would, by definition, be constitutional.

There is no danger of such an amendment passing, however.

Much more of a danger is the idiotic notion of a "living constitution," where no amendments are necessary and you can just willy-nilly "reinterpret" however you want.
 
Harshaw said:
If it contradicts anything previous, it supersedes. So yes, it would, by definition, be constitutional.

There is no danger of such an amendment passing, however.

Much more of a danger is the idiotic notion of a "living constitution," where no amendments are necessary and you can just willy-nilly "reinterpret" however you want.
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Fair enough. I didn't know that the constitution had provisions to allow contractions. I had assumed we would simply remove an amendment rather than add confusion by inserting and permitting contradictions.

Regardless, the constitution could be amended if a better method of taxation could be modeled.

Also, why does the government not want taxes apportioned among the states?
 
Pozessed said:
Fair enough. I didn't know that the constitution had provisions to allow contractions. I had assumed we would simply remove an amendment rather than add confusion by inserting and permitting contradictions.

Regardless, the constitution could be amended if a better method of taxation could be modeled.

Also, why does the government not want taxes apportioned among the states?
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The states aren't field offices of the federal government. They are sovereign entities.
 
Harshaw said:
The states aren't field offices of the federal government. They are sovereign entities.
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Why not? They sure act like it. I don't remember the states deciding what the FDA did and didn't prohibit.
 
Pozessed said:
Why not? They sure act like it.
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No, they don't.

I don't remember the states deciding what the FDA did and didn't prohibit.
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They didn't have anything to do with it. Not sure why you think this matters.
 
Harshaw said:
No, they don't.



They didn't have anything to do with it. Not sure why you think this matters.
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The FDA was brought up to exemplify states are not sovereign. The states do as the FDA tells them, they do not vote to tell the FDA what to regulate and prohibit.
 
Pozessed said:
The FDA was brought up to exemplify states are not sovereign. The states do as the FDA tells them, they do not vote to tell the FDA what to regulate and prohibit.
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The states are under no obligation to do anything the FDA tells them. States have no duty to enforce federal law.
 
Harshaw said:
The states are under no obligation to do anything the FDA tells them. States have no duty to enforce federal law.
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I learned quite a few new things because of our conversation. Thank you for your patience and your knowledge.

It seems odd to me that the federal government can enforce laws that conflict with a sovereign entity. That would be like the US government arresting people in another country for breaking laws of the USA.
Also, if the states are sovereign, how could the feds tax those people directly as they do? That would be like the US government trying to tax a foreign countries public population.

Sorry for my ignorance, but I do enjoy the feedback.
 
Pozessed said:
I learned quite a few new things because of our conversation. Thank you for your patience and your knowledge.

It seems odd to me that the federal government can enforce laws that conflict with a sovereign entity. That would be like the US government arresting people in another country for breaking laws of the USA.
Also, if the states are sovereign, how could the feds tax those people directly as they do? That would be like the US government trying to tax a foreign countries public population.

Sorry for my ignorance, but I do enjoy the feedback.
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The Feds have certain powers, and the states have certain powers. And they share some others.

If it's a federal power, a state is under no obligation to help enforce it, but it can't interfere.
 
I would have liked to have a debate about the OP's thoughts on taxes as opposed to whether it would be constitutional or not. It is an interesting idea. Don't know how that would work out between a diehard blue state and a diehard red state but, I guess that would be that particular state's problem. As far as other types of taxes go, the states all do their own thing anyway.
 
Harshaw said:
The Feds have certain powers, and the states have certain powers. And they share some others.

If it's a federal power, a state is under no obligation to help enforce it, but it can't interfere.
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I do understand that bit. I just have a problem discerning how any entity would consider itself sovereign with such an obvious imbalance of power. I don't think any other sovereign bodies would consider themselves sovereign with the parameters I offered as examples in my previous post. Any other country for example, would more than likely require the USA to work with their law enforcement to apprehend any criminal in their country the USA wished to bring back to the states. And I certainly doubt that the officials in another country would consider themselves sovereign to the USA if their entire countries people were obligated to be taxed by the USA, especially as often as we are taxed by the US government.
 
Pozessed said:
I do understand that bit. I just have a problem discerning how any entity would consider itself sovereign with such an obvious imbalance of power. I don't think any other sovereign bodies would consider themselves sovereign with the parameters I offered as examples in my previous post. Any other country for example, would more than likely require the USA to work with their law enforcement to apprehend any criminal in their country the USA wished to bring back to the states. And I certainly doubt that the officials in another country would consider themselves sovereign to the USA if their entire countries people were obligated to be taxed by the USA, especially as often as we are taxed by the US government.
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There are various things the feds have no business interfering with in the states, too. The majority of everyday things, really.

Lots of people want that to change, but it's the way things are set up.
 
Harshaw said:
There are various things the feds have no business interfering with in the states, too. The majority of everyday things, really.

Lots of people want that to change, but it's the way things are set up.
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That would be the exact opposite of sovereign.

Seems like it is what largely started the War of Independence.
 
Pozessed said:
That would be the exact opposite of sovereign.

Seems like it is what largely started the War of Independence.
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What would be the exact opposite of sovereign?
 
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