Income taxes represent 51% of government revenue and payroll taxes account for another 36% – where would government revenue come from? We already run massive deficits.
>In the USA, the top 5% of earners pay 65% of income tax. What do you think of simply abolishing income tax for everyone else?
I don’t love it.
35% of income tax revenue is still a lot of money. (100-65=35)
I wouldn’t want to add that amount to the deficit. That would just fuel inflation and drive up interest rates.
In theory, it could be matched by spending cuts, but so far Trump and the Republicans have been raising spending. I expect them to continue doing so, just like Republicans typically do.
Maybe we could get increased revenue from somewhere else, but then it would come down to whether that is a better option or not.
I also like the idea of us all having ‘skin in the game’. It is possible that we will all be more responsibly if we view ourselves as taxpayers.
…but a land value tax augmented by a income tax for the richest among us wouldn’t be a bad alternative.
I’m generally opposed. Part of what knits a society together is everyone getting something from participation in society, and everyone sharing the cost of that. Everyone should have a reason to want to sit at the table, and everyone should split the bill for the cost of the table in proportion to their ability to pay.
IMO, we should not create a situation where people are permanently excluded from taxation. It’s fine to let people get into a situation where they have a net negative tax rate temporarily (ex. During a recession when the government needs to stimulate economic activity, or to help support people who are temporarily out of work to get back on their feet).
But we shouldn’t set things up such that people are permanently excluded from bearing the responsibility to keep society together.
One of my strongly held beliefs, is that if people believe they are paying nothing for something, they are much less likely to value it and/or they are much less likely to think they should have a voice in what they get.
I would much rather a system in which somebody who earns say $25,000 a year pays taxes and then receives in benefits and services and even something like the EITC more money than they paid in. Because simply the act of paying taxes means they feel like the government is obligated to serve them.
The idea of the Laffer Curve is trivially true even if Republicans are wrong about the numbers: at 100% marginal tax rate you get less tax revenues than 95%, because people won’t bother earning money. 90% is probably better than 95%. 80% is probably better than 85%.
Somewhere in there is an “optimal” percentage. We’re not there yet, but if you raise taxes for the top 5% by 50% of what they’re already paying to make this revenue neutral I’d have to wonder if we get there instantly.
And then any further spending beyond that will need to come from the bottom 95% again.
And you might say “okay so don’t spend any more”, but there is plenty of spending that is necessary, and there is plenty of spending that has very positive returns and is a blown investment opportunity if you don’t do it.
How the fuck would you fill that 35% deficit whole?
I am in favor of shifting taxes higher up the bands to offer revenue to either A: offer tax relief or B: offer additional gov services (whichever makes more sense for the policy goal); but I am not in favor of just dropping income tax to zero for such a large portion of the tax base. I could maybe understand it if you paired it with a VAT but that gets very complex very quickly.
No, everyone should be paying in. The bottom half should be paying more than they do now imo. The top should be paying even more than that. We need to up rates across the board to deal with our spending.
Taxes are necessary to fund vital infrastructure, public utilities and institutions.
I’ve never liked this whole “tax the rich” rhetoric because it doesn’t address the fundamental issue of economic justice:
Why are the rich so rich in the first place?
Collective bargaining brings down income inequality drastically, at which point we come closer to an ideal society where everyone pays taxes because everyone makes good money.
This kind of “the rich should pay most of the taxes” rhetoric hides the fundamental reality that maintaining a functioning society is everyone’s duty.
Because 35% of the federal income tax revenue is still about $84B, based on 2024 numbers. That’s not an overwhelmingly massive amount of money in terms of total spending or revenue, but it’s still a very useful amount of money.
I’d go even further. Eliminating income tax from the bottom 90% and raising it for the top 5% by 50-75% would almost be a wash.
The last time I looked, the bottom 90% paid 1/3 of the income tax. We can replace the lost taxes by increasing what we collect from the top 5, 1, and .1%.
I’m absolutely in favor of it. The Income Tax system burdens 95% of the population because of the unnecessary anxiety and and barriers its regulations create. Eliminating the income tax filing requirements for 95% of the population would be extremely beneficial, and we could more than make up for the lost revenue with higher taxes on the top 1% and tariffs. The only people who’d be hurt by such a measure would be the IRS agents and accountants, and they could find other jobs quickly. Homeless people could be starting businesses in just a few months with this strategy.
The real failure of the income tax system was its refusal to let people make meaningful deductions for housing, education, and healthcare costs. The currently allowable deductions on those areas are almost insulting.
I’m perfectly comfortable with a steeply progressive tax structure, but in general I tend to think that all but the very poorest should be contributing at least something to community funding, even if the amount is small and marginal.
No. I think we should have a more broad based tax system in order to fund a more generous welfare state. That would include raising taxes more on wealthy people, but I don’t think we should be cutting taxes on anyone unless we’re trying to get out of a recession (and even then I’d prefer direct government spending.
We shouldn’t eliminate it for any income earner. Everyone needs to contribute something, and even the poorest do so, however it is obscured by our ridiculous Rube Goldberg machine of tax law. The current system makes it too easy to play with the numbers to make it seem like one group is paying more or less than “their fair share.” It also makes it too easy for the very wealthy to exploit loopholes (though this is by design, I’m quite sure).
A simple graduated, progressive tax with zero deductions, credits, or the like would be much better than what we currently have. Tax realized capital gains on a separate, but still progressive, schedule. Tax loans against investment assets (e.g. stock or real estate portfolios) at some nominal, but not trivial, rate (or even treat them as ordinary income).
Dipshits I work with say it’s unfair that the rich pay all the taxes, and at the same time say if you took all the rich people’s money away, taxing them 100%, it wouldn’t make a dent in the deficit. Which is it, do they pay all the tax or not? We used to have a 91% top tax rate, 51% corporate, and the deductions created a system where workers were paid more, and revenue was reinvested. Our economy exploded, and income inequality was low. We have the opposite now.
35% of the income tax is technically called a shitton of money.
It’s great that people are living longer, but this means that there are fewer economically productive people relative to those who aren’t, and that means nearly everyone’s taxes should go up.
How would this even work? Any hard cutoff is stupid.
Right now top 5% is 342,987. So someone who makes 342,986 keeps all of it, but someone who makes $400k pays taxes and is worse off? If that was the case, people would be falling over backwards to make sure they stay under this limit (unless they can go way over it, like 500-600k).
Plus throwing away 35% of total revenue seems like a bad idea when we’re already deeply in debt.
A steeper progressive tax with more brackets makes much more sense IMHO.
No. If anything, the lower classes should be paying more in income taxes. If they don’t, then we will never have the social welfare state that many on the left want.
People should pay income tax in proportion to the amount of national wealth owned by their income bracket. Aka if the 1% own 90% of the wealth, they can pay 90% of the taxes. Let them eat their own cake.
Absolutely love the idea that the IRS can be smaller, focused on 5% of the population rather than 95%, and then remove taxes for most all families, especially for workers on overtime/bonus time who get tax withheld at the maximum.
Where is the other 35% of revenue gonna come from?
There should never be a hard line between people who pay a lot of tax and people who pay none, just as there shouldn’t be a hard line on welfare programs
We could feasibly erase the bottom marginal tax rate and keep the other marginal rates the same, but I’m not sure we could drop 35% of the income tax revenue.
I did an analysis on my own states income tax revenue sources, and realized most people making under 15k AGI aren’t really providing any revenue, they give Oregon about 5% of it’s income tax revenue and often they get more in government transfers than they pay in taxes.
Since the top 10% of Americans own 67% of the wealth, they should pay 67% of the taxes.
The bottom 50% owns 2.5% of the wealth, so they should pay their 2.5% this is what a progressive tax system is.
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Income taxes represent 51% of government revenue and payroll taxes account for another 36% – where would government revenue come from? We already run massive deficits.
>In the USA, the top 5% of earners pay 65% of income tax. What do you think of simply abolishing income tax for everyone else?
I don’t love it.
…but a land value tax augmented by a income tax for the richest among us wouldn’t be a bad alternative.
I’m generally opposed. Part of what knits a society together is everyone getting something from participation in society, and everyone sharing the cost of that. Everyone should have a reason to want to sit at the table, and everyone should split the bill for the cost of the table in proportion to their ability to pay.
IMO, we should not create a situation where people are permanently excluded from taxation. It’s fine to let people get into a situation where they have a net negative tax rate temporarily (ex. During a recession when the government needs to stimulate economic activity, or to help support people who are temporarily out of work to get back on their feet).
But we shouldn’t set things up such that people are permanently excluded from bearing the responsibility to keep society together.
Removing income tax from the bottom 50% of earners would be a much easier solution to start with
It’s about a 2.5% revenue gap to fill, opposed to a 35%
One of my strongly held beliefs, is that if people believe they are paying nothing for something, they are much less likely to value it and/or they are much less likely to think they should have a voice in what they get.
I would much rather a system in which somebody who earns say $25,000 a year pays taxes and then receives in benefits and services and even something like the EITC more money than they paid in. Because simply the act of paying taxes means they feel like the government is obligated to serve them.
The idea of the Laffer Curve is trivially true even if Republicans are wrong about the numbers: at 100% marginal tax rate you get less tax revenues than 95%, because people won’t bother earning money. 90% is probably better than 95%. 80% is probably better than 85%.
Somewhere in there is an “optimal” percentage. We’re not there yet, but if you raise taxes for the top 5% by 50% of what they’re already paying to make this revenue neutral I’d have to wonder if we get there instantly.
And then any further spending beyond that will need to come from the bottom 95% again.
And you might say “okay so don’t spend any more”, but there is plenty of spending that is necessary, and there is plenty of spending that has very positive returns and is a blown investment opportunity if you don’t do it.
Rates should probably be raised across the board to make up for deficits.
How the fuck would you fill that 35% deficit whole?
I am in favor of shifting taxes higher up the bands to offer revenue to either A: offer tax relief or B: offer additional gov services (whichever makes more sense for the policy goal); but I am not in favor of just dropping income tax to zero for such a large portion of the tax base. I could maybe understand it if you paired it with a VAT but that gets very complex very quickly.
No, everyone should be paying in. The bottom half should be paying more than they do now imo. The top should be paying even more than that. We need to up rates across the board to deal with our spending.
Taxes are necessary to fund vital infrastructure, public utilities and institutions.
I’ve never liked this whole “tax the rich” rhetoric because it doesn’t address the fundamental issue of economic justice:
Why are the rich so rich in the first place?
Collective bargaining brings down income inequality drastically, at which point we come closer to an ideal society where everyone pays taxes because everyone makes good money.
This kind of “the rich should pay most of the taxes” rhetoric hides the fundamental reality that maintaining a functioning society is everyone’s duty.
Because 35% of the federal income tax revenue is still about $84B, based on 2024 numbers. That’s not an overwhelmingly massive amount of money in terms of total spending or revenue, but it’s still a very useful amount of money.
I’d go even further. Eliminating income tax from the bottom 90% and raising it for the top 5% by 50-75% would almost be a wash.
The last time I looked, the bottom 90% paid 1/3 of the income tax. We can replace the lost taxes by increasing what we collect from the top 5, 1, and .1%.
I’m absolutely in favor of it. The Income Tax system burdens 95% of the population because of the unnecessary anxiety and and barriers its regulations create. Eliminating the income tax filing requirements for 95% of the population would be extremely beneficial, and we could more than make up for the lost revenue with higher taxes on the top 1% and tariffs. The only people who’d be hurt by such a measure would be the IRS agents and accountants, and they could find other jobs quickly. Homeless people could be starting businesses in just a few months with this strategy.
The real failure of the income tax system was its refusal to let people make meaningful deductions for housing, education, and healthcare costs. The currently allowable deductions on those areas are almost insulting.
That’s not the way it’s done in Nordic countries
Everyone should pitch in, the rich should just do a lot more because it’s easier to make money when you already have it
I’m perfectly comfortable with a steeply progressive tax structure, but in general I tend to think that all but the very poorest should be contributing at least something to community funding, even if the amount is small and marginal.
And replace it with what?
We need a big government to do various things for people. Income tax is just a pragmatic way to do that
No. I think we should have a more broad based tax system in order to fund a more generous welfare state. That would include raising taxes more on wealthy people, but I don’t think we should be cutting taxes on anyone unless we’re trying to get out of a recession (and even then I’d prefer direct government spending.
We shouldn’t eliminate it for any income earner. Everyone needs to contribute something, and even the poorest do so, however it is obscured by our ridiculous Rube Goldberg machine of tax law. The current system makes it too easy to play with the numbers to make it seem like one group is paying more or less than “their fair share.” It also makes it too easy for the very wealthy to exploit loopholes (though this is by design, I’m quite sure).
A simple graduated, progressive tax with zero deductions, credits, or the like would be much better than what we currently have. Tax realized capital gains on a separate, but still progressive, schedule. Tax loans against investment assets (e.g. stock or real estate portfolios) at some nominal, but not trivial, rate (or even treat them as ordinary income).
Yes i am in favour of that and also cut medicaid and other socialist programs, government needs to just govern not give out freebies
Dipshits I work with say it’s unfair that the rich pay all the taxes, and at the same time say if you took all the rich people’s money away, taxing them 100%, it wouldn’t make a dent in the deficit. Which is it, do they pay all the tax or not? We used to have a 91% top tax rate, 51% corporate, and the deductions created a system where workers were paid more, and revenue was reinvested. Our economy exploded, and income inequality was low. We have the opposite now.
35% of the income tax is technically called a shitton of money.
It’s great that people are living longer, but this means that there are fewer economically productive people relative to those who aren’t, and that means nearly everyone’s taxes should go up.
How would this even work? Any hard cutoff is stupid.
Right now top 5% is 342,987. So someone who makes 342,986 keeps all of it, but someone who makes $400k pays taxes and is worse off? If that was the case, people would be falling over backwards to make sure they stay under this limit (unless they can go way over it, like 500-600k).
Plus throwing away 35% of total revenue seems like a bad idea when we’re already deeply in debt.
A steeper progressive tax with more brackets makes much more sense IMHO.
No. If anything, the lower classes should be paying more in income taxes. If they don’t, then we will never have the social welfare state that many on the left want.
Single tax is society’s liberator, crush landlordism and embrace LVT and free trade and YIMBYism
People should pay income tax in proportion to the amount of national wealth owned by their income bracket. Aka if the 1% own 90% of the wealth, they can pay 90% of the taxes. Let them eat their own cake.
Great!
Absolutely love the idea that the IRS can be smaller, focused on 5% of the population rather than 95%, and then remove taxes for most all families, especially for workers on overtime/bonus time who get tax withheld at the maximum.
The impact of a well funded government is significantly more valuable to most citizens than an extra thousand or so in their pay check.
No. Everyone in a society contributes in some way.
Where is the other 35% of revenue gonna come from?
There should never be a hard line between people who pay a lot of tax and people who pay none, just as there shouldn’t be a hard line on welfare programs
We could feasibly erase the bottom marginal tax rate and keep the other marginal rates the same, but I’m not sure we could drop 35% of the income tax revenue.
I did an analysis on my own states income tax revenue sources, and realized most people making under 15k AGI aren’t really providing any revenue, they give Oregon about 5% of it’s income tax revenue and often they get more in government transfers than they pay in taxes.
We should just have a flat income tax with a ridiculously high personal exemption. Say 50k.
No, but taxes should be far more progressive, not regressive.
Since the top 10% of Americans own 67% of the wealth, they should pay 67% of the taxes.
The bottom 50% owns 2.5% of the wealth, so they should pay their 2.5% this is what a progressive tax system is.