I have not moved a single goal post
you certainly have - the last time we had this discussion you merely zoomed in on the variation within the range to demonstrate that collection does, in fact, fluctuate.
all I did was respond to your reasoning as irrelevant because it is. Of course lowing the top tax rate is going to have some effect on overall revenues, however, that alone does not prove your point.
when the top rate was lowered, all rates were lowered. and your claim that "of course lowing the top tax rate is going to have some effect on overall revenues" remains unsubstantiated in the
negative sense though we do have some substantiation in the
positive sense:
so here is the unfortunate fact. as tax rates were dramatically lowered for
all taxpayers, revenue actually
climbed slightly as a measure of GDP. Not enough to push it out of the historical range, but enough to push us to the upper side of it. This utterly invalidates the claim that revenues are merely a function of rates - had
that been he case then revenues would have fallen as dramatically as the rates did - or at least they would have fallen
at all.
Its neither moral nor immoral and it has nothing to do with screwing people.
on the contrary, our current tax code
is stupid, and it
is immoral. Our tax code punishes people for saving and investing (which is economically beneficial) and rewards them for going into debt in order to consume (which is economically harmful). It punishes people for getting married and forming stable families in which to raise children. It discourages new business formation and investment. It encourages malinvestment and helps to feed bubbles. On top of all that, it costs us a huge amount of money to maintain. We could fight four wars the size of Iraq and Afghanistan, and still have enough left to fund the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, NASA, and the EPA;
just on the cost of compliance alone.
It's been well-bandied about that 45% of households don't pay income taxes. Another figure - slightly less known - is that 6 out of 10 households now receive more money from the Federal Government than they pay in taxes, so the 45% actually understates the matter. Not only should I not pay my fair share of government, it seems, I should have you cover my share, and then I think I should have you pay me a little something extra on the side. The US has the most progressive tax structure in the industrialized world. (I know, it surprised me too.) Now, a progressive tax code is supposed to have the wealthy pay more than the middle class or the poor as a percent of their income. I get that, and I get the basic notion of fairness behind it. But it also strikes me that the basic "fairness" of such a system depends on the middle class and poor actually paying
something. Not as much as the rich, but
something. Even if it's just
one percent, you should pay
something on tax day rather than looking forward to it as a day when the government sends you a big ole fat check.
Instead we've allowed our politicians to turn our progressive tax structure into a weapon of class warfare, and rewarded them for encouraging us to use it to try to take from others. Our tax code encourages dependency on government rather than self-reliance. It encourages us to turn on each other and form opposing blocs seeking to suck each other dry rather than fostering a sense of national unity and a belief that we are each helping to pay for the necessary costs of government. Look at you in this thread - you aren't pushing ways that you can earn more, you are pushing for ways that you can seek out hunt down and force more out of someone else because there are more of you than there are of them. Politicians can take advantage of people who are convinced that Someone Is Out To Get Them, and they can take advantage of people who think that They Can Get Something For Nothing; but it's harder for them to take advantage of people who are convinced that What We Need Is To Come Together To Have Responsible Governance. Our tax code doesn't just hurt our poor (who stand the most to lose from the economic losses it encourages), it doesn't just hurt our national pocketbook, it hurts our soul. It encourages greed, grift, lying, and cheating in the average man and woman. People who would never steal from their neighbor's house are tempted and encouraged by the complexity and messaging of the system to steal from him by taking advantage of the tax code to minimize their burden and increase his. It weakens what it means to be American, to be in something together, to take care of your own costs and be responsible for your own self. It weakens our sense of community by setting us against each other and putting us into a zero-sum game of I-win-You-lose. Instead of everyone seeking to combine our forces to produce good governance, the tax code has become a way for us to
take from each other.
I don't get why people always try to make taxes a personal issue.
well, it's probably to do with the fact that individuals pay taxes, and are effected by the tax code and the cost of business in general. for example, i know several families who will be out of work the day after the EPA passes it's own version of Cap-and-Trade (if it ever does so), and the taxes inherent in Obamacare will have a similar effect (which is why so many businesses are so eager to get exemptions). If you don't make enough to think that you are effected by it, then of course
you don't look at it as a personal issue - but those who get screwed of course are.
And if they organize there, then all we have to do is tax them on their US operations as if they were here due to their tax evasive behavior.
yeah! hunt them down right? make 'em squeal! how
dare they try to minimize their tax burden, as if they were normal people, just like everyone else?
:lol: but no. It's tax
avoidance. tax
evasion is illegal. we are not yet communist china, and it is not yet illegal for people to move without the permission of the government. though we shall see how the Boeing case works out.
all those rates came down when the top ones did. the fact that revenue consistently comes in at around 18.5% of GDP irrespective of tax rates remains.
