[quote gandalf]In truth, I don’t know what the answer is. VAT? Flat?[/quote]
I would love a Flat/VAT tax (personally benefits me – though in reality, it would not be right.), but looking at that tax schedule above, people netting under $40-50k a year would pay quite a bit more in taxes. Those over $40-50k will pay less (the flat tax equivalent for the current in terms of government revenues was estimated at around 15% to 17%). VAT tax only taxes when someone spends. Basic survival costs are virtually the same for rich and poor – so VAT taxes are even more regressive than a flat tax. The percentage of income going to taxes will reduce with increasing income in a VAT tax system. – this is why Steve Forbes was proposing both of these. (snark)Britain has partial VAT tax .. and has a quasi landed ‘aristocracy’. I wonder why the VAT (/snark).
[quote gandalf]Definitely not a ‘fair system’ right now. Public finance is a mess, GOP is starving the beast, while billionaires and corporations within corps within corps play shell games with asset growth.[/quote]
First, it has to be realized that taxing is just like pressing down on a balloon. Push down on one area and another pops up. If you tax a company too much, they will offshore. If you also tax their offshore income, they will move completely out of the country. There are several foreign countries which have almost no corporate taxes. The trick is to balance the company’s desire to stay in-country with its desire to avoid taxes. Being within the United States has several advantages; educated workforce(generally), a workforce that tends to work instead of “mai phan rai”(sp) or mañana(generally), reliable power and water, low government graft-extortion(offset by being harder to bribe the gov), predictable environment(few revolutions, gov is not likely to seize assets just because). It is a tricky balance.
The rich don’t game it through the offshore/shell game, etc methods. If you want to see how they do it, take a look at how Spanos and McMillin do it.
Spanos: gets a ticket guarantee at the stadium – not tied to performance of the team. He can they just choose the cheapest and not the best players. It was estimated that the city was kicking in around $3mil/yr on the guarantee. He then tries twisting the city’s arm to get a stadium built for him (that he does not have to pay for, but gets the proceeds from) at the city’s cost.
McMillin: effectively gets the deed to the Naval Training Center property(prime real-estate/land) for a song and gets to develop and profit from it. http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~cba/news/story/11-30-10GoldmanSDDT.pdf
