If tax rates were 0%...

• sleeper

  

  Would you be happier?
  
  No taxes. No sales tax. No income tax. No poll taxes.
  
  Zip. Zilch. Nada.
• Commander of Awesome

  

  No, I like roads, police, mail, etc...
• sleeper

  

  Commander of Awesome;1159644 wrote:No, I like roads, police, mail, etc...

  You can donate to those organizations or find another way to pay for them if you'd like them. I don't care about police, I have a shotgun. I don't care about mail, I have e-mail. If I need roads, some private company can step in, build, maintain, and charge a small fee to use their road.
• j_crazy

  

  Privatize them.
  
  
  /belly'd
• Con_Alma

  I wouldn't. I would rather have some of the things provided by the government such as the Military and infrastructure.
• sportchampps

  I'd rather have only taxes on purchases and have it a flat fee for everyone.
• sleeper

  

  sportchampps;1159664 wrote:I'd rather have only taxes on purchases and have it a flat fee for everyone.

  Me too.
• thavoice

  The flat tax thing has always fascinated me for some reason. Would it work?
  
  Personally I think it would LOWER my tax burden as I dont buy much at all.
• sleeper

  

  thavoice;1159698 wrote:The flat tax thing has always fascinated me for some reason. Would it work?
  
  Personally I think it would LOWER my tax burden as I dont buy much at all.

  It would work but the poor would cry because they will claim the rich don't pay their "fair share". No different than what we have right now I suppose.
• thavoice

  Sleeper......who really are the people that are crying that the rich are not paying their share? Ya hear it in the news, but any time it is brought up amongst friends or just in simple conversation all the people I hear is they realize the rich pays a shit ton of taxes and why pay more?
  
  
  Anyways......I could handle the flat tax I suppose. I dont mind paying taxes......I like having roads and cops and military and such.,
• Laley23

  

  No, but I think you could lower taxes a bit. I dont think our country would come close to surviving without taxes though.
• dlazz

  I don't pay tax because I run a Church.
• sleeper

  

  thavoice;1159725 wrote:Sleeper......who really are the people that are crying that the rich are not paying their share? Ya hear it in the news, but any time it is brought up amongst friends or just in simple conversation all the people I hear is they realize the rich pays a shit ton of taxes and why pay more?
  
  
  Anyways......I could handle the flat tax I suppose. I dont mind paying taxes......I like having roads and cops and military and such.,

  Your friends are just probably being PC about it, or your friends are not lazy slackers who don't work like half the Democratic party.
• thavoice

  sleeper;1159735 wrote:Your friends are just probably being PC about it, or your friends are not lazy slackers who don't work like half the Democratic party.

  I dont think that is particularly true, but you may have a point...I dont think many of my friends are democrats. Not many in my area are.
• gut

  sleeper;1159646 wrote:You can donate to those organizations or find another way to pay for them if you'd like them.

  Toll roads aside (which I'm not sure how effective/profitable those are), the main reason we have govt to pay for military and infrastructure (which is about all the fed gubmit was originally intended for) is because it's unprofitable and too impractical to expect the private sector to step up.
• sleeper

  

  gut;1159769 wrote:Toll roads aside (which I'm not sure how effective/profitable those are), the main reason we have govt to pay for military and infrastructure (which is about all the fed gubmit was originally intended for) is because it's unprofitable and too impractical to expect the private sector to step up.

  Couldn't the government fund that in other ways? Ie. Leasing federal land, selling oil resource permits, invading other countries and selling their resources to private industry, buying shares of Apple stock?
• sleeper

  

  thavoice;1159768 wrote:I dont think that is particularly true, but you may have a point...I dont think many of my friends are democrats. Not many in my area are.

  Typically, and this isn't true for all Democrats, but most are pretty dumb when it comes to basic economics. They think its okay to take more money from someone because they were successful in life.
• sherm03

  

  I'd prefer a 0% income tax and a higher sales tax.
• gut

  thavoice;1159725 wrote: Anyways......I could handle the flat tax I suppose. I dont mind paying taxes......I like having roads and cops and military and such.,

  I don't oppose a progressive tax system, and I don't know anyone that does. Tax "efficiency" is mostly a theoretical economics argument, especially when you start talking consumption vs. taxes on productivity. Flat taxes are superior, and a flat consumption tax superior still, but that carries other trade-offs and externalities that is probably not preferrable.
  
  I think the issue most people have with higher taxes, even on the rich, is they recognize it's just an excuse to spend more. And I was slower to come around to the sense of urgency some others have had, but many Americans are now starting to recognize the massive accrued liability/tax building up that's going to soak the life savings OF EVERYONE when the creditors eventually cut-off the govt.
• FatHobbit

  

  gut;1159782 wrote:I think the issue most people have with higher taxes, even on the rich, is they recognize it's just an excuse to spend more.

  Ding! Ding! Ding!
• said_aouita

  

  sleeper;1159646 wrote: If I need roads, some private company can step in, build, maintain, and charge a small fee to use their road.

  Will the private company be Union?
  
  
  
  /FlatTax
• sleeper

  

  said_aouita;1159824 wrote:Will the private company be Union?
  
  
  
  /FlatTax

  If said private company wants to overpay for labor, then sure.
• goosebumps

  

  I'm all for the fair tax. Allows us to tax lots of money that we couldn't touch before. Tourists from other countries, illegal immigrants, drug money, etc.
  
  The rich are overtaxed, period. I'll never be in the top 1% but how can poor people honestly be pissed at someone who is paying 100 million dollars a year in taxes? 100 million dollars is not a "fair share"? give me a fucking break. (I'm assuming bill gates pays at least that haha)
• gut

  goosebumps;1159842 wrote:I'm all for the fair tax. Allows us to tax lots of money that we couldn't touch before. Tourists from other countries, illegal immigrants, drug money, etc.

  Don't get me started on Fairtax, haha. It's basically the same system repackaged in a shiny new wrapper. It's only "redeeming" quality, if that can ever be said for higher taxes, is that some sort of federal consumption tax is inevitable.
  
  The feds have been dinking around with capital gains and marginal rates since the beginning, and they pretty consistently only get @18% of GDP. There's not this mountain of untapped tax revenues laying out there that Washington is trying to sell us. The people you are trying to soak spend and invest globally, and that's a loophole you can never close. The whole thing is just a dog chasing it's tale. If the govt wants more revenue, you have to change the whole fundamental tax structure, and pretty much the only opportunity left is a VAT or some form of sales tax.
  
  And the cute trick a VAT pulls is since you are now taxing consumption, you create a massive deferred revenue asset on the govt balance sheet that represents taxing a second time savings that were already taxed when earned as income.
• Sonofanump

  If police/military and infrastructure were the only expenses that government spent monies on, most would not bitch about taxes. It's the socialist welfare system that allows someone to drive up in an Escalade and drop $200 of food stamps on prime steaks that is the problem.