[miscreanity]

Any tax decrease "disproportionately" benefits the wealthy because they have more.

A 1% decrease on $50,000 income is going to be less than the same percentage decrease on $500,000.

Of course, you could argue that "progressive" tax take care of that, but it only serves to drive away a portion of high meet with individuals to the point where tax revenue generally doesn't change much anyway while it can actually increase the overall burden on lower income earners.

Better solution: goodbye income tax.

Much like open source software where individual usage is free, only consumption/sales and corporate taxation has any legitimacy now.

Businesses need a commerce-positive, safe environment for such activity. In order to attract that, no income tax is an excellent incentive. Businesses, which are fictitious entities, support the services needed to entice localized growth; as population grows, so does business activity and revenue, thus tax revenue for services as well.

Of course, any system is prone to corruption filling the power vacuum so eventually it would fail. However, so long as individuals are as unencumbered as possible, people can opt out rather than continue to be abused.

Additionally, taxes serve as a psychological leash and intellectual substitute. Financial/investment education is virtually non-existent in the US and it's generally misguided or even wrong in some instances. If individuals are coddled and promised to be taken care of, they become unprepared for difficult situations.

Let a dog be a dog and let a person be a person, not a slave.

[dragonwriter]

> Any tax decrease "disproportionately" benefits the wealthy because they have more.

Untrue; consider, e.g., the adoption of EITC if it didn't already exist. It's a pre tax decrease, but wouldn't benefit the wealthy (in first order effects) at all.

Or abolishing payroll tax and transferring equivalent amounts into the various trust funds out of general revenue, a pre tax decrease that would slightly benefit the wealthy (because Medicare tax), but disproportionately benefit those whose income was primarily from labor, which isn't the wealthy.

[justin66]

Or more simply, a reduction in the amount paid in the first few tax brackets. That is a tax decrease that would benefit everyone but proportionally benefit more those to whom the upper tax margins are irrelevant.

[miscreanity]

So complicate the tax issue which increases costs elsewhere and contribute to government managed funds that prove inept? Taking funds from a farmer growing crops successfully and giving them to the one nextdoor who still hasn't been able to get a seed to sprout is a textbook definition of idiocy, not to mention theft.

None of that changes the fact that tax breaks will be greater in absolute numbers for wealthier individuals than for those earning less. Play games to fudge numbers so all is not equal as much as you want - those with resources avoid participating in socialistic wealth redistribution.

No income tax is far simpler. Do you know what the cost for enforcement of individual income tax is? Hint: think astronomical.

Go after about 140 million individuals vs working with approximately 28 million businesses? Do you think business or individuals are more professional? Who had the bright idea to create such a logistical nightmare?

You can keep working with an insane system if you want but people with resources do what people without resources would eventually do in the face of direct taxation, whether financially or physically - leave.

[pmyteh]

> No income tax is far simpler. Do you know what the cost for enforcement of individual income tax is? Hint: think astronomical.

I do know what the cost of enforcement of individual income tax is, at least in a sane system with effective witholding and most people not submitting stupid tax returns every year: about 1.25% of money raised (https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmtr..., table 7).

And the simpler you make the system the cheaper it is (this is NOT flat rates - calculating graduated taxes on income is basically free) - you can see this from the "National Insurance Contributions" line on the same table, which is an effectively zero-complexity additional income tax which costs a third of a percentage point of money raised.

So not astronomical. Really quite efficient.

[miscreanity]

They're actually getting even better at it - 1.12% in 2009-10!

I like how you've pointed out the amount relative how much theft^H^H^H^H^H "tax" revenue is brought in rather than the absolute amount of:

£3,673,797,000

That's pretty astronomical to me. I'm sure you'll find other ways to break it down and try to refute but it still doesn't change the waste of time taxation incurs.

My stance will not change from the perspective that income tax is more destructive to low-income earners than it is to the wealthy, and that it drives away wealth.

Let's just settle this as "we won't agree" since I have more productive things to spend my time on than arguing over what shouldn't exist in the first place. Pray for Brexit or go down with socialist Europe.