• BassTurd@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    What your saying is all possible with with a progressive tax, only more tax revenue would be generated. The way a progressive tax works is at certain income levels, the tax % goes up, but only for income earned above that amount. Idk what those numbers are off the top of my head, so I’m going to make them up. Say less than 20k is exempt, then up to 80k is 20%, then 200k is 30%, then 400k+ is 40%. So if I make 150k, I pay 20% across the board. If I make 300k, I pay 20% on the first 200k, then 30% on the next 100k, and so on. A flat tax charges the same % on all income at all levels for everyone. While that might seem fair on the surface, it’s not when you take in account cost of living. If I make 20k and have to spend $100 on groceries every week and pay 10% of my income to taxes, that’s $7200 a year, or 36% of my income. If I make 200K a year and spend the same on groceries, that’s $25000 or 12.5% of my income. Poor me ends up taking a much bigger hit than wealthy me after accounting for cost of living. If wealthy me paid 20% instead of 10% I still have > $150k take-home which is more than enough to live on.

    Businesses are different. They shouldn’t have any tax loopholes or write-offs (imo) and should have to pay taxes on revenue. A progressive tax could work there as well, but the brackets would be higher. And the end of the day, everyone should be paying taxes including businesses, whether that’s flat or progressive, except I think if you’re in poverty you should be exempt.

    The rich are still rich, the poor get some built in help with exemption, and there’s more tax money to subsidize social programs, healthcare, and other things.

    • DONTBANTHISACCOUNT@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Ok 👌 I am going to have to read that a few times n go do some arithmetics on that, N I’ll get back to You on that someday.

      I just had a feeling that if tax dollar went to subsidize good living standards for all , whether poor or middle class that it wouldn’t be a big deal if we all paid about roughly the same percent for all to have access to decent wage / life / opportunity at climbing some kind of a ladder of a profession / industry .

      I’ll try and read more about both ideas 💡 of tax n understand it better…

      TY BassTurd