We all know somebody will get screwed in this. It’s just a matter of who.
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The popular answer is “no one, we just cut taxes without spending”, by which they mean they screw the next generation (and possibly debtors generally by crowding out private sector borrowing with higher interest rates as the government gets more endebted, but they seem to be happy to print their way out of that for now).
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Well, as a single person earning $150k you aren’t lower middle class anywhere in the US (if you’re looking at any sort of meaningfully large area).
Why should taxes go up for you when they go down for everyone else? Well, that’s just the way it works. This is the problem with tax reform. Tax reform should be done, at least in my opinion, by looking at the overall structure and theoretically determining how you want the overall structure to look. Some people’s taxes will go up, some will go down, almost no one’s will stay the same. If you want true tax reform though, we can’t do that by looking at how it will affect any specific individual. If that’s the way you want to do it, then you’re going to have a piecemeal system like we have today with lots of complexities, and we aren’t going to have actual tax reform how most people think of it (i.e. we aren’t going to have the “Internal Revenue Code of 2018”).
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It would only balloon the deficit if you proceed from the assumption that all the spending the federal government does is necessary.
IMHO, the only people who favor a “progressive” tax system are those who don’t think it’s “fair” that someone has more than they do. In reality, a truly fair system would be everyone pays the same dollar amount, but that’s unreasonable.
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You are demonstrably wrong. There is a tax cut on the table. There is no corresponding spending cut. Therefore, it will balloon the deficit. It requires no such assumption or value judgment about what the government does or doesn’t spend.
I have more than 99% of people and I favor a progressive tax, so your HO is wrong.
Do you believe that someone who is born with a crippling disease and can’t work should pay the same dollar amount as someone who never worked a day in their life and inherited a fortune? What about a soldier whose legs were blown off by an IED protecting his country. He should pay the same as a CEO? You have a strange sense of fairness.
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The wealthiest people in the country are in favor of a progressive tax system.
As you noted, we have a progressive tax system because it’s the only type of system that can work. Wealthier and/or higher income individuals need to pay more as a percentage of their income/wealth than poorer people. We don’t have it because its the most “fair.”
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There are 4.3 trillion (over ten years) of cuts on the table…
If you’re in favor of a “progressive” tax, then what’s stopping you from refusing your own tax deductions? Do you take your personal exemptions and refuse to deduct your mortgage interest, etc?
I didn’t say that I supported everyone paying the same dollar amount…but that WOULD be the very definition of fair.
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Those “wealthiest people” who are in favor of a “progressive” tax system are certainly welcome to pay MORE than they’re required to do so. However, even Warren Buffet, that “champion” of the middle class, takes his deductions, which makes him a hypocrite.
If we don’t have a “progressive” tax because it’s “fair”, then why do people use the euphemism “fair share” instead of the far more accurate “take more from people who have more than I have because I’m envious of them”
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I don’t use that phrase. Other people use it as a political slogan. High earners pay their fair share and the fair share of lots of other people. But that’s the system we have because that’s what we need. It fulfills the goals of raising more revenue, but also makes incentives more relevant.
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Property taxes are deductible for the year in which they were paid. I’m sure that many people double up two property tax payments in a single federal tax year.
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For what?
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You mean the kind that can work in a democracy. Any system that the army /police supports is going to be stable, you just might not like it. For centuries under a feudal system (or maybe North Korea), the peasants paid the taxes and it was good to be the King. If you don’t like it and think it’s not fair, well, keep your mouth shut or it’s off to the concentration camps with you.
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You only have to look as far as Kansas and Oklahoma to see that flat taxes are not enough to fund the government. The wealth doesn’t trickle down either.
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“wealth” does trickle down. When’s the last time a poor person gave you a job?
As far as “flat taxes are not enough to fund the government”, it appears that you’re proceeding from the assumption that deficit spending is a “funding problem” rather than a spending problem.
If you make 100k a year, and spend 150k a year, do you have a funding problem or a spending problem?
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I’ve worked for people who are less “wealthy” than me. I’ve also worked for people who made less than me.
A spending problem. A funding problem. Both. Who cares? Tax reform should be more about determining what you want the tax base to be. You can work out percentages, brackets, etc. afterward. Obviously they’re all intertwined so you’ll have to tweak certain areas, but whether we’re spending too much is not significantly relevant to how to change the base.
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The base is always the middle class. Poor people don’t have enough money to take, and there aren’t enough rich people to fund the government even if you taxed them at 100%. The middle class doesn’t pay that much each, but there are lots and lots of them. All the rest is politics and window dressing.
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Sorry, meant tax base. Updated original.
I have to say, I like the conversation going here. Also the ability of adults to respect each other. It’s amazing that this is happening on a forum. I’m impressed. Not joking.
Continue. 
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Not sure if you’re arguing that $150k puts you above or below “lower middle class”. However, you’ve not seen the cost of living in the bay area. The median house in a terrible area is $800k and you’ll be commuting 3+ hours round trip to work because you live so far away. The median house in an area where you might want to live is $1.2M and that’s a basic 3/2 home.
You’re paying 10% state income tax to California. Gasoline and everything else is taxed heavily.
$150k per year is going to be $80k after taxes. And you have a mortgage bill that costs you $50k+ per year. You’ll be lucky to save even $1 in your retirement accounts after paying your bills if you’re only making $150k and trying to live a middle class lifestyle.
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True. Federal income taxes aren’t based on take-home pay. They don’t really care if you’re high or low COL. But they also don’t tell you where to live. That’s up to you and the market.
The wide disparity in living costs definitely fuels the debate over who’s rich, who’s poor, and what class you belong to.
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