Everything costs money. So tax everything that people buy/consume at a set %, the same for everyone. You buy a $100,000 house you pay $100,000x% You buy a $10,000,000 house, you pay $10,000,000x% Same rate for everyone. Same percentage of owned wealth gone. The wealthy pay more because they buy more. The poor pay their fair share. And as an added bonus, you could almost completely eliminate the IRS. So what's the problem with this idea?
Why stop there? Why not just take all money and distribute only ten percent of the gross to everyone?? Make sure there's no income inequality any more. I think that if all money was confiscated from every single person in America, then we could end the national debt in one year. After all, nobody really needs more than thirty five thousand dollars a year. Oh, and confiscate all property too. Give the big homes to the big families that need it, and give the small homes to the small families, or the could, or the single person that needs it. I mean, come on man. A huge thirty bedroom house for one person? How fair is tha? It is not fair, and that can hold a lot of people. You know, if we take the big houses from those awful rich people who contribute nothing to society, then we could probably house the homeless in it. Tkae the houses and the money and kick them to the curve for punishing them for creating this income inequality. I think that's an excellent idea. Who cares about the constitution? It's just a piece of toilet paper. Rights are like badges. We don't need no steenking badges, as they say.
The poor don't have it "fair" in life because of the rich, didn't you get the memo? The IRS has thousands of government "jobs" and is needed to continue growing the government which can only be a good thing For the far left, the IRS = Good, Poor people and making sure they stay poor = very good. So, all powerful government with mostly poor citizens sucking on the government teat = utopia. Mr. President? Is that you blessing us with your presence on the forum?
Sure they would. They just wouldn't have enough money to fund things like the IRS star trek parody and dance videos or Obama and his wife flying on two different aircraft to the same spot. 18trillion in debt....its time to conserve. The problem with the OPs idea is, there is no problem with the OPs idea. That's why it can never come to fruition.
How would bartering everything do anything. At one point tax would be paid on said object. Just like apartment onwner's do not pay property taxes, the tenants do. The cost of the taxes are figured into the rent.
Such taxes hurt the poor and middle classes much more than the wealthy. Most poor people spend every dollar they earn, and most middle class people also live paycheck to paycheck. Wealthier people spend a smaller % of their income on day to day living, and tend to put their excess money where they don't pay any taxes on it. So while the average person is spending 25% of their income on taxable items, the wealthy have an effective tax rate of 10%. I have seen no credible flat tax or fair tax proposal that doesn't require at least a 25% flat or sales tax.
If the hypothetical tax rate is 5%, then your average poor person who purchases an $80,000 house would pay $4,000 in taxes where as, if a millionaire bout a $8,000,000 house you're paying $800,000 in taxes. The rate can be raised to ensure government gets its funding. It wouldn't be hard. But this way, if you didn't want to pay taxes, don't buy anything. If you like to buy all kinds of expensive (*)(*)(*)(*), you'll be taxed for it. A consumption tax. Couldn't think of the word last night in bed.
If a government sought to gather all its income from sales taxes, prices would shoot up, discouraging purchases and thus depressing the economy. People who could would buy from abroad, tourism would be impacted as could exports (depending how your system handled them). In general terms, if there was a simple answer to creating a perfect tax system, don't you think we'd be doing it already?
First thing is that a consumption tax would have to be much much higher than 5%. Second poor people don't by homes, they rent, so they would have to pay the tax every month.
Well, it's not really fair, or even economically efficient. Sales taxes increase the prices you pay for consumer goods … that is a bad thing. Income taxes decrease wages and that is also a bad thing. The only tax that doesn't burden production or trade, even has NEGATIVE dead-weight losses (meaning the economy actually does better with the tax than without it) is a land value tax. "In my opinion the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved value of land, the Henry George argument of many, many years ago." — Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate in Economics (1976) "Our ideal society finds it essential to put a rent on land as a way of maximizing the total consumption available to the society. ...Pure land rent is in the nature of a 'surplus' which can be taxed heavily without distorting production incentives or efficiency. A land value tax can be called 'the useful tax on measured land surplus'." —Paul Samuelson, Nobel laureate in Economics (1970) "Economists are almost unanimous in conceding that the land tax has no adverse side effects.” – William Vickrey, Nobel laureate in Economics (1996)
This is not really true. The only way property taxes can be passed to tenants is if the tax is greater then the rental value of the land which the apartments set on -- which it usually isn't. Land is fixed in supply which means that taxation cannot create scarcity, and if taxation does not create additional scarcity then the tax cannot be passed on. Land value taxation does lower the exchange value of land, but cheaper land prices will not increase the rents that apartment tenants pay. Adam Smith explained this over two hundred years ago in the 'Wealth of Nations'.
Bull if you own an apartment complex where do you come up with the money to pay the taxes? I will give you a hint not out of your pocket. The taxes are a cost of doing that is figured in your rent, just like utilities if they are included. The landlord is not eating those cost they are most deffently figured into rent. Just like snow removal, lawn care, repairs, and any other cost that goes into the up keep of the complex. That is then figured out on a per unit cost. I rent 8000 acres of ground and I am here to tell you my landlords are not paying their land taxes with social security money. They are using rent money. Just think about it a little it only makes sense, if they would raise taxes to a piont that they would not make money on a unit they would raise the rent right?
If they could get more money for the land, why don't they already charge more? What's stopping them? Market forces. Even a tax on the full rental value of land (disregarding buildings, etc. on that land) won't allow them to get more than the market rent. The parasitic get-something-for-nothing landlords could of course in their greed try to charge more than the market will give them and thus get no tenants. It's up to them, really. The smart landlord will continue to demand the market rent. What he gets to keep off it will be solely what is paid for the improvements, none of what is paid for the land, which would exist anyways and which he is not contributing to the economy. Brilliant idea, .
Have you noticed a theme developing? That to receive a Nobel laureate in Economics is paramount to be declared the Village idiot. Seems the same thing can be said for the peace prize.
Pure bull, they charge what they will and the tenants pay of leave. There are no shortage of tenents, just properties for rent and it's going to get much tighter.
Taxes on land value cannot be passed to tenants. If property taxes are increased the landlord just makes less income if the taxes are increased high enough the landlord will abandon the property. Just because the landlord abandons the property doesn't mean that the property will not continue to be used by the tenants. If the tax is exactly what the tenants are willing to pay then the property will continue to be used by them, but then there is no profit for the landlord and that is why he abandoned the property. This is why high property taxes help keep home prices down, making home ownership more affordable. High property tax states have the best economies and low property tax states have the worst economies. Land value taxes cut out the parasitic landowner which makes everyone else better off.
How much more rent would you be willing to pay before you (and any other potential tenant) simply said “screw this” and left? That is exactly how much of a land value tax that can be passed by the landlord to you, and after that the landlord will eat the full burden of any additional taxation – without the slightest possibility of passing even one more penny of the tax burden to the tenant. And I can tell you one other thing, if you are not already close to saying “screw this” then your landlord should really raise his rent demands right now, if he is smart.
The fact that land value taxes cannot be passed to tenants has been known for over two-hundred years. Your arguments to the contrary are just proving that you know nothing about economics. Read what is below and learn something.
Don't know from which planet you hail, but it's definitely not the third rock from the sun. Of course someone is going to pay good money for a property and then abandon it, on some other planet, not this one.
One needs to examine just whom they are trying to learn from or they may just manifest that learning into reality. But I did learn something, Merlin Harold Hunter would be the next to last person in the world I would seriously consider as a mentor on anything, the last would seem to be yourself. And to imagine he spent all those years at the University of Illinois destroying young minds. Seems he spent a career teaching how the government can best steal. And undoubtedly you are not a land owner much less a landlord. But I see that Keynesian economics is still in full swing. And it would seem your view of economics have little to do with reality.
