| > People make this mistake all the time. The rich are paying the vast majority of all taxes paid, whether by income or property purchases. This is true, but when you compare the percentages of the taxes that they pay to the percentage of the income that they enjoy, you'll find that they are paying a smaller percentage of the taxes than they are enjoying the benefits of income. And that's reported income: there are plenty of legal loopholes that allow the rich to legally avoid reporting large portions of their income. > What isn't taxed is accumulated wealth and it should not be. I agree with this, but this is used as an excuse for not taxing investments as highly--which doesn't make sense. Income is income is income--it shouldn't matter if that income comes from work or capital gains. > The US has one of the most progressive systems in the world, one that harms competitiveness of businesses as well. The US is one of the least progressive systems in the developed world. Sure, we're more progressive than Somalia, but that's to be expected. > The simplest solution is to move from income to taxing spending. The richest spend the smallest percentage of their income and therefore would be taxed the least percentage. I'm not sure what mental gymnastics you're doing to make this make sense in your head but it doesn't make sense anywhere else. Also, income tax doesn't dis-incentivize anything: there will always be an incentive to make more money. But a spending tax would dis-incentivize spending--which would be terrible for the economy. For someone who earlier was complaining that our tax system hurts the competitiveness of business, I'm not sure what makes you think a tax system that encourages dragon-like hoarding of wealth would hurt the competitiveness of business: it would, if anything, mean that people simply avoid doing business at all. > We have had the technology for tens of years where we can send people assistance, pension, and medical payments. Hence the technology to refund a percentage below the tax threshold exists. Okay, this could work, but why would we tax people just to refund them? > The reason is simple, a single flat/fair/etc tax on all purchases and service buys removes a lot of power from government. That's true, but it moves that power squarely into the hands of large corporations that are even less answerable to the people who their actions affect. I don't like governments any more than the next person, but I do like them more than giant corporations whose only morality is greed. At least a democratic republic has incentives to appear somewhat moral some of the time. Corporations have no such incentive. > You got me when I earned it, how dare you take it from family just because you decide it was no longer ours once one person dies. Ah yes, it's really important that we keep the wealth in the hands of a few people who were born into it. We wouldn't want to incentivize work, innovation, or progress, now would we! |