US Presidential Candidates

On regulations. It makes no sense to pass regulations that drive up the cost of business to the point that companies move those jobs to other countries that don't care about workers safety or the environment.

We don't need a Federal agency fining a local roofing company for not making their employees wear a safety harness, or inspecting the grounding plugs on a portable drill. We do need them to make sure that the concrete casing on a well head in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico isn't going to fail and cause billions of gallons of oil to flood the Gulf.

Let the States, local governments, lawyers, and Unions take care of the little things.

biochem wrote:- Cutting taxes can lead to an economic boom.

Cutting taxes can have a small to middling economic stimulative effect... depending on specifically which taxes are cut. (And cutting the top end income earners taxes or those on corporations are *not* the tax cuts that effectively produce those effects)


But cutting taxes has *never* resulted in enough of a stimulative effect that the increased resulting tax revenue offset the loss of revenue from the initial cut. didn't happen when Reagan cut taxes. Didn't happen when Bush cut taxes. Just never happens.

You could probably construct a hypothetical scenario in which some dystopian government had such insanely punitive tax structures that cutting those taxes actually had enough stimulative effect on the economy that the treasury ended up more full from the lower tax rates after they were cut, but here in the real world of any developed nation those conditions do not apply.

So every time I see the GOP with their hair supposedly on fire about the deficit and the debt one minute then screaming and throwing a tantrum about wanting to cut taxes the next it just reminds me they can't be taken seriously.

Most economistd believe that the biggest national government caused rate limiting step now is regulations.

Please point me to a reference citing the statistics on who these "most economists" are.

As far as the current tax code the biggest problem is fairness. That is huge in the corporate part as the big companies are using their lawyers/accountants/clout to pay as low as 0% tax while smaller companies get clobbered. If they actually follow through with the proposals to create a 15% flat corporate tax without all of the loopholes that will be a boost to smaller companies.

No argument here...

Similar fairness problems play out on the individual side that is why the flat tax with a floor proposals are so attractive to so many Republican primary voters. In general they eliminate most or all of the deductions/exemptions/loopholes and everyone pays a flat rate on any dollar earned above the floor. So if the floor is $50000 any family earning less than $50000 pay $0, a family earning $60,000 pays tax on $10,000, a family making $1 million pays tax on $950,000 and a family making $1 billion pays tax on $999,950,000. Right now the families making the big $$$$ pay very low effective rates because of all of the loopholes, these proposals would correct that.

Here's the serious, serious, serious problem with that.

While the floor addresses the issue of the bottom end of the income ladder simply not having disposable income they can afford to have taken as taxes without going without little things like food or clothing or shelter... there is a fundamental issue with the manner in which society works that all but guarantees that a non-progressive tax system, or even an insufficiently progressive marginal tax system, will inevitably lead to accelerating levels of wealth and income inequality.


The problem is that as people get richer they gain more political and social influence. Which they can use to stack the deck to make them richer. Which makes them more powerful. Which they use to get RICHER. Which makes them MORE POWERFUL.

And on, and on, and on.


Sure, you're going to have some inept idiots lose their fortunes, and the occasional success story of someone clawing their way from the bottom to the top, but the overall trend is going to be an ever growing concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer people.

A progressive marginal tax structure is one way of putting the brakes on that trend, it doesn't stop it but it slows it the hell down and at least gives you a chance to deal with it in other ways. But if you switch to a flat tax all of a sudden you have people down below who are just above the floor with very little disposable income after taxes so they just don't have anything to spare to exert any significant level of influence. Then as you climb the ladder the proportion of income earned which is disposable and available to those people to use to influence the system in their favor and cement and reinforce their position at the top just grows like crazy.

Lol, so the answer os a flat tax with a floor at the living wage, along with a progressive sales tax. (Ie: the rate increases as the price increases. Perhaps within catagories like furnature, entertainment, motor vehicle, etc.)



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Ok, stupid thought time.

If you did the above flat tax at around 40%, or perhaps a tad more, would there be enough revenue to remove company tax.
After all if companies are going to such large extent trying to avoid it, removing it could be a good thing.

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Annachie wrote:Ok, stupid thought time.

If you did the above flat tax at around 40%, or perhaps a tad more, would there be enough revenue to remove company tax.
After all if companies are going to such large extent trying to avoid it, removing it could be a good thing.

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I am going to use http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/ just to show the the basic numbers.

In 2014 Federal Government :

Personal income taxes=1.39 trillion
Corporate income taxes=0.32 trillion

So to replace corporate income tax would require Federal income tax increase of .32/1.39 or about 23% in taxes paid. Which doesn't really answer your question.

For more fun if you go to http://www.bea.gov.

Total wages (not including capital gains or interest income) was 7.447 trillion.

Total compensation of employees was 9.249 trillion.

That additional (Supplements to wages and salaries) which include Employer contributions for employee pension and insurance funds and Employer contributions for government social insurance.

The effective federal tax rate on wages 1.39/7.447 or 18.7%. But that doesn't include Social security, health care and pensions. In 2014 Social insurance taxes were 1.52 trillion.

Which still does not answer the question you asked and the numbers I provided are not all exactly equal either.

The tax plans as offered by the candidates superficially if you follow their other plans and everything works out, will generally work. These guys despite what they sound like are pretty smart and have some pretty smart advisers.

But we end up arguing about the "assumptions" inherent in the candidate "plans".

A bar chart comparing Corporate and individual income taxes taxes for the last ten years.
http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/reve ... 7cs_11f12f

Probably won't help as none of this can be dealt with in isolation.

Good luck understanding this post,
T2M

Just to show where the US federal government revenue source. Has a pie chart for 2014 but allows each person to drill down to whatever interests them. If they are willing to work at it.

http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/fed_revenue_2014USrn

Best wishes,
T2M

Annachie wrote:Lol, so the answer os a flat tax with a floor at the living wage, along with a progressive sales tax. (Ie: the rate increases as the price increases. Perhaps within catagories like furnature, entertainment, motor vehicle, etc.)



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I freely admit to not being all that smart. And more looking around did find this.

There is a simple answer to the question actually.

National Income and Product Accounts Tables Table 2.1. Personal Income and Its Disposition

Personal income in the US was ~14.7 trillion.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/tot ... Srt_17rs5n

Total Federal Outlays: ~$3.5 trillion in 2014

To fund the entire US Federal Government based on these to things with no other revenue. Would require a flat rate of 3.5/14.7 or ~23.8%. In 2014.

Like every other SIMPLE answer not worth much of anything.

T2M

Annachie wrote:Ok, stupid thought time.

If you did the above flat tax at around 40%, or perhaps a tad more, would there be enough revenue to remove company tax.
After all if companies are going to such large extent trying to avoid it, removing it could be a good thing.

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The problem is, I doubt a lot of companies would actually lower their prices to reflect the reduced corporate tax (or use the additional money for capital improvements). That would result in increased personal taxes and increased corporate profit with no real benefit to anyone outside the executive levels of those companies.

Competition would tend to dissuade companies from taking that approach. The few companies that do lower prices would increase revenue and likely profits even if their profit margin shrank. This strategy works well enough for Walmart to make the the largest retailer in the world.

Starsaber wrote:

Annachie wrote:Ok, stupid thought time.

If you did the above flat tax at around 40%, or perhaps a tad more, would there be enough revenue to remove company tax.
After all if companies are going to such large extent trying to avoid it, removing it could be a good thing.

Sent from my SM-G920I using Tapatalk

The problem is, I doubt a lot of companies would actually lower their prices to reflect the reduced corporate tax (or use the additional money for capital improvements). That would result in increased personal taxes and increased corporate profit with no real benefit to anyone outside the executive levels of those companies.

PeterZ wrote:Competition would tend to dissuade companies from taking that approach. The few companies that do lower prices would increase revenue and likely profits even if their profit margin shrank. This strategy works well enough for Walmart to make the the largest retailer in the world.

Starsaber wrote:
The problem is, I doubt a lot of companies would actually lower their prices to reflect the reduced corporate tax (or use the additional money for capital improvements). That would result in increased personal taxes and increased corporate profit with no real benefit to anyone outside the executive levels of those companies.

In the long term, yes, but part of our problem in all levels of society at the moment is that there isn't enough consideration of effects in the long term. That was a contributing factor to the Great Recession and part of what has slowed our recovery. Executives are looking at their bonuses for the quarter and politicians are looking at the next election. Neither is looking at what would be best for the company/state/nation in the next 10-20 years. It goes further than that with people living paycheck to paycheck and not saving for the future, but most normal people don't have as big of an impact when their short term decisions hurt them in the long term.