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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Metacomet who wrote (209569)	11/26/2012 9:58:27 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 540839

A thought exercise : can total income be greater than g gdp t If not, I don't see how you can get to single digit tax rates. Then there's the issue of income tax versus payroll tax. If you don't integrate payroll tax into the system it is regressive in net bite out of your average wage slaveholder 's check.

To: Metacomet who wrote (209569)	11/26/2012 10:08:01 PM
From: research1234	Respond to of 540839

A quick google of federal tax receipts shows that in 2009, the bottom 50% of earners paid less than 2% income taxes. Payroll taxes are about 7.5%, so on average the lowest half of all returns paid a bit less than 10% of their income in federal taxes. Total federal tax receipts are about 18% of total income. A flat tax as you propose would almost double the tax burden on 50% of the country. That would have a devastating personal impact, and would bring the economy to its knees - low income earners spend everything they earn just to survive. High income earners would not increase their spending anywhere near enough to offset this drop in spending. A flat tax is impractical give the current US wage distribution.