Not sure about the US but the UK has a very odd problem being actively promoted by the government. The financial crisis has effectively polarized the make up of labour in this country. The jobs lost in the crash have been replaced by low paid, zero hours contracts and people in self employment with little income (think people selling cupcakes and those stupid glitter covered glasses and bottles type shit). These people earn so little they don't even hit the threshold to be taxed on their incomes. The middle earning people have dropped vastly in numbers and these are the people who pay the majority of the taxes. Then you have a large increase in the numbers of people acquiring substantial wealth (despite the recession the number of billionaires in the UK doubled between 2008 and 2012 and the number of millionaires increased by 30%) and these people have the means to pay accountants and tax lawyers to help them minimize their tax bills. All this results in the government announcing just this week that despite huge amounts of cuts in public services and welfare the deficit actually increased because the taxes collected have plummeted.
Quite frankly though, and this is likely the same in any neo-liberal, hyper-capitalist country, if the government actually enforced corporation taxes effectively they would have ample money. Unfortunately the legislature of these countries tends to be so heavily lobbied and corrupted by bungs from big business that they are effectively in these companies pockets and so will never tax them rigorously.
A perfect example in the UK was last year when on the same day the government announced they were cutting welfare payments by £6 billion pounds Vodaphone announced a deal with the UK HMRC to pay only £100m of the £6b they owed. It's far easier to take the money from the people who don't have the means to fight back than it is to take it from the companies who can either pay a huge legal team and who can also effectively bribe government ministers with promises of lucrative "consultant" positions when they leave office.
You could also fix any tax system by making sure that the same tax lawyers who write tax law in your country don't then go off into the private sector and get paid far more money in order to show the companies the loopholes in the laws they wrote. Or more worrying is that private companies pay those tax lawyers to write loopholes into the tax laws in the 1st place.
Sounds like the UK has almost identical tax issues that the US does.
I have heard a flat tax idea rolled around.
What if the effective tax rate and the actual tax rate were both 15% for federal taxes? Then states would be 8.5% and local taxes 6.5%?
It should be capped like that.
And it should be a flat rate meaning no one gets out of it regardless of their situation.
Another proposed method is the excise tax option: taxes are paid when ever goods or services are exchanged. No income taxes. It is basically a Super-Sales Tax.
Then there are the graduated tax plans, the ones we have now, that the UK and the US have. These are massive holes of corruption.
I think that any place that takes in revenue, which includes churches, should pay taxes.
I like the 9-9-9 plan that Herman Cain talked about. It needs some work. Perhaps it should be 12-12-12 or 10-10-10?
More to come as I have lots of talk about and I need to learn a lot more.
Originally posted by dadudemon
Sounds like the UK has almost identical tax issues that the US does.I have heard a flat tax idea rolled around.
What if the effective tax rate and the actual tax rate were both 15% for federal taxes? Then states would be 8.5% and local taxes 6.5%?
It should be capped like that.
And it should be a flat rate meaning no one gets out of it regardless of their situation.
Another proposed method is the excise tax option: taxes are paid when ever goods or services are exchanged. No income taxes. It is basically a Super-Sales Tax.
Then there are the graduated tax plans, the ones we have now, that the UK and the US have. These are massive holes of corruption.
I think that any place that takes in revenue, which includes churches, should pay taxes.
I like the 9-9-9 plan that Herman Cain talked about. It needs some work. Perhaps it should be 12-12-12 or 10-10-10?
More to come as I have lots of talk about and I need to learn a lot more.
Flat rate income tax is something an emerging party in the UK (UKIP) proposed in their last election manifesto. Frankly seems like a bad idea to me as it simply means those on lower incomes and in the lower tax bracket pay a higher % of their earnings and those on higher incomes in the higher bracket pay less of a % of their earnings in tax.
V.A.T in the UK is currently at 20% as a sales tax yet it's very oddly applied. Crisps (potato chips) are subject to VAT yet similar products that aren't classed as crisps such as Doritos and Pringles aren't subject to VAT. As a principle I suppose a graduated super sales tax is feasible in that you apply a higher tax % on higher priced goods meaning that people with the means to buy extremely expensive luxury goods wouldn't really think of paying a higher % of sales tax on top of the item price. That way if rich people who can avoid income tax by various means will still pay a higher % of tax when they spend their income on supercars, yachts etc anyway. Although I'm sure they'd get around it by importing many of those purchases but then you could simply enforce an excise duty on it anyway.
I certainly think that Churches should pay taxes as well. It's ridiculous that an institution as rich as the Catholic church doesn't have to pay taxes. It's one of the richest organisations on the planet in terms of fixed assets such as land and property as well as items of high value such as art works and precious metals.
Originally posted by red g jacks
how would you go about objectively determining the best answer?
We probably should start here:
http://www.diffen.com/difference/Objective_vs_Subjective
Objectively good tax solutions would need to meet several criteria. My question for you would be, "what are those criteria?" Your solution would need to be objectively met, at least in theory.
I think some important things we could and should try are.
Count capital gains as income. Have a simplified tier system, something like first $15,000 free, $15,000 to $250,000 at 25%, $250,000 to $1,000,000 at 35% and over $1,000,000 at 45%
Perhaps have a sales tax on everything at like 10%
Estate tax could also need an overhaul. An exemption of $5.5 million seems mind bogglingly high.
Close other loopholes, and invest in IRS agents, they pay for themselves manyfold.
Perhaps do a 5% bring back oversea capital deal, with requirements of how it has to be invested in the US.
And some other, non tax-income ideas.
Reevaluate all subsidies publicly and cut superfluous ones.
Require insurance, have a public health option and regulate prices for medical expenses and medicine.
Create a free secondary education system.
Originally posted by Bardock42
I meant higher education should be free. Secondary, luckily, is already.
Outside the US, it is referred to as post-secondary education or tertiary education. I think they mainly call it those names in the UK.
If you helps you feel any better, I knew exactly what you meant and I wasn't going to say anything. 🙂
Also, I like your solutions. I really really really like the flat tax, with no exceptions, solution. A single page of laws on taxes. Someone on the interwebz had something like that. I was utterly enthralled.
It will take more than one solution.
I think the most debilitating problem with taxes is the tendency for the government to use taxes for corruption.
Not to mention the big-name corporations with their tax-reducing/evading techniques.
Another thing to note is there are so many superfluous taxes being imposed on services and products in the US as well as in most European countries, which is still somewhat related to government corruption.
My aunt who resides in the UK told me that almost every product/service is taxed there.
Just to give an example, even public utilities and services are heavily taxed. Here in Asia (at least in Southeast Asia and the Middle East), almost all public utilities are used for free.
Certain utilities are taxed in the UK because they are provided by private companies- of course they are taxed. The alternative isn't cheaper utilities because fully public services are paid out of general taxation- it would just mean income tax etc. would go up.
I have no idea what you mean by 'heavily' taxed though. Fuel and power is very low taxed and water not at all.
Originally posted by Robtard
****ing amazing
I thought about that...
If the six billion pounds fee/tax issue with Vodafone would put Vodafone out of business, the loss in jobs and the tax revenue from those employees could be even more costly. There is also the information output from such a large corporation: it creates more money for the UK than just the direct taxes they pay. There are organizations that are related/tie-in to Vodafone that would also be very negatively impacted if Voda went belly-up overnight because they were forced to sell-off all of their infrastructure and close shop due to a bill that is too high.
Just like a person, large corporations, if they f*ck-up and end up with a huge tax bill, should get the option to make installments.
Edit - I do not think Vodaphone would go out of business if they had a firesale of 6 billion pounds. But their profits are very marginal (pun). They don't seem to have much to spare. As the world's second largest mobile carrier (and one of the world's largest telecommunication infrastructures), the UK Government has a strong interest (pun) in keeping them in the black.
I can understand the government working with them so they don't fold considering their size and who they employ. But 100mil out of 6bil walk-a-away, that is ridiculous.
As you said, an installment plan makes sense. Say 100mil every 6month or so sounds far more sensible than: "Meh, pay a pittance of what you owe, we'll make it up by ****ing over some other people."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2287216/Revealed-One-UKs-companies-pay-tax.html
This is why it's a problem.
Originally posted by Robtard
I can understand the government working with them so they don't fold considering their size and who they employ. But 100mil out of 6bil walk-a-away, that is ridiculous.
The'll be done in 60 years of payments...
100 million each year for 60 years = 6 billion. 😄
In the US, I think the IRS gives you far less time to make your tax payments.
As one of my employees just said to me (about the Vodafone tax issue): "Why drain the lake to get the fish?"
Originally posted by jaden101
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2287216/Revealed-One-UKs-companies-pay-tax.htmlThis is why it's a problem.
It says their profits were 9.4 billion pounds. It was actually 429 million pounds.
This is why I don't think people should use the dailymail: other than having racist stuff every now and again, smut almost all the time, but they have factually incorrect articles like this one that say they had 9.4 billion pounds in profits.
Also, the title of the article is dishonest: it makes it seem like the government is subsidizing those companies by giving them money. That's not what is happening: they are tax breaks. They are not getting a tax return, which is how they are painting it. Tax deductions and credits affect the bottom-line just the same until you get into the black with your taxes. At that point, then, sure, credits and deductions are different (because you cannot keep throwing on deductions and get more and more money back on a tax return but you can do so with credits).
So Vodafone pays taxes every single year (lol, no they don't...that's why we are in this mess...but they owe every single year), those credits are functionally deductions. Because people are dumb, generally, and do not understand credits vs. deductions, news sites usually say "tax breaks" instead of credits or deductions.
Anyway, to sum up, this is why I say to not use the Daily Mail to support a position. They are worse than Fox News...if such a thing is possible.