Okay, crazy thought in my head regarding a tax system.
Liberals generally like a progressive tax that has the higher incomes paying a significantly higher amount and that is light on the poorer ones.
Conservatives generally are wanting to have everyone have some skin in the game and avoid situations where only one bracket is getting played with due to mob rule.
So what if we did this. We set 6 brackets and they are unmovable. Bracket 1 is our baseline bracket with each other bracket being X times higher than the baseline bracket. That number (X) can not be changed, and individual brackets can not be changed. The only way to change the tax is to affect the baseline bracket. It would look like this
1) $0 - $24k . . . . . . . 1 (baseline)
2) $24k - $72k . . . . . . Baseline * 2
3) $72k - $144k . . . . . Baseline * 4
4) $144k - $240k . . . . Baseline * 6
5) $240k - $360k . . . . Baseline * 8
6) $360k + . . . . . . . . Baseline * 10
The only deduction would be from Chlidren. Your baseline is reduced by 6% per child (may of 4 children), with that 6% going down by 1 for each bracket you're in. So Bracket 1 would get the full 6% per, bracket 3 would be getting 4%, and bracket 6 would be 1% per.
From there, politicians can still argue over taxes but only in regards to changing the baseline. If you want the upper bracket to pay 70% you can, however the poor will be paying 7% and middle class will be paying between 14% and 28%. Want to make the upper income brackets pay under 30%? Then the poor is going to be paying less than 3% taxes and the highest middle class tax would be under 12%.
This would eliminate the ability for politicians to play to any particular base, pitting them against the other. Whether that be convincing everyone to go after the "rich" or doing a "pay off" to the wealthy by lowering their taxes. It would interject a bit of stability into our tax rate system as well and make it slightly less of a constant politicla issue. It'd also simplify the tax code immensely.
You could set Capital Gains at say Baseline * 5 and leave it at that, taking Capital Gains also off the table as a political tool. Ditto for setting something like the Corporate Tax (Base * 5 as well)?
So, what would your thoughts of this generalized tax scheme be? Like it? Dislike? Like the theory but not the numbers? Also, what would you push for the starting baseline to be?