The US needs a federal flat tax on property and assets

[FarCenter]

The income tax is inadequate to meet the revenue needs of the US, and it is incapable of preventing the excessive concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.

We should institute a flat tax of 0.5% on all the assets, financial and real, of all US citizens and persons, including people, trusts, corporations, partnerships, charitable and religious institutions, endowments, insurance funds, hedge funds, mutual funds, private equity funds, family offices, etc. The tax should apply to all assets regardless of whether they are in the US or abroad. To allow complete and efficient enforcement without loopholes, it should be withheld and remitted annually by all account holding financial institutions, foreign and domestic, and it should have no minimums, exceptions, or deductions.

[Angry Dragon]

1. How much money will that bring in??

[GKirk]

2. Speaking of regressive tax schemes...

...a senior citizen with no income other than SS but who owns a house
would have to pay this tax?

[JoePhilly]

5. Granny needs to get off her ass and get a job!!!

[originalpckelly]

10. Of course, these dipshits do not see that it won't matter to the rich!

:rofl:

[dkf]

3. Do you realize how much of a pain it is to do an estate tax return?

You are basically asking every citizen to do this every year of their lives.

Full employment for appraisers.

[aquart]

4. The regressive idiotic flat tax rears its moronic head again.

Who likes a flat tax? THE VERY WEALTHY. Gosh, I wonder why.

[OneGrassRoot]

13. Can you explain why the wealthy like it?

I'm asking out of sheer ignorance. Knowing some of those in favor of the flat tax makes me very, very skeptical that it's a good plan for most people, but I admit I don't understand the ramifications, or why the wealthy would like it.

Thanks in advance.

:hi:

[TeamsterDem]

16. imagine this

let's say the flat tax is against your income. You earn $1 per year, I earn $5. There's a 10% flat tax. You now have $0.90 whereas I have $4.50. Who's hurting more in that equation?

Extend that to real-world terms. You earn $35,000/year. I earn $250,000. 10% flat tax. You now have $31,500. I'm left with $225,000.

Flat taxes are unfair because 10% of a poor person's money cuts more into their ability to pay basic necessities whereas the rich, taxed at the same flat rate, are still left with way more than enough for necessities. That and Adam Smith himself in The Wealth of Nations said the rich should be taxed at a higher rate as a proportion of their income/assets.

[former9thward]

17. Every single flat tax proposal I have seen has a high personal exemption deduction.

That gives the lower incomes a break compared to upper incomes.

[TeamsterDem]

20. i've not seen that

but i do know this: that what a flat tax does is inherently reduce tax revenues and rates overall. well, i mean unless we're talking about a very high flat rate to begin with.

considering that the tax code has flattened over the years (as republicans reduced marginal rates) and, as that's happened, the wealth inequality has predictably skyrocketed, i'm not sure what possible moderate/progressive argument could be made for it. on top of that most republicans/flat taxers admit that eventually they'd like to move to a flat excise rate and get rid of an income tax altogether. with that, of course, there's absolutely no exemption for poor folks.

[Shagbark Hickory]

6. No thanks!

:hi:

[StarsInHerHair]

25. I HAVE IT! Flat tax that kicks in at $100 million, another that kicks in at

$1 billion.

[Curmudgeoness]

7. Although I like the idea, the implementation is impossible.

Hell, I am an accountant, and I don't have a clue what my "assets" are worth at any given time. House? Unless I was going to sell it, I don't even think about it. Car? Will everyone have to check the value before doing their taxes? Investments????? Uh, do I use last week's values, or today's values???

[roamer65]

8. NO.

We simply need to bring back the income tax rates from the 1970's. The rates were as high as 70% back then.

I would give only one tax break to the wealthy. If they directly invest in American business and as a direct result create American jobs, then they should get a break.

Flat taxes hit lower income people much harder...no thanks.

[metalbot]

9. The problem with a tax on assets is that it has no correlation to ability to pay

Assets aren't the same as cash, nor are they necessarily readily convertible to cash. Also, assets frequently need to be sold as a unit. If your asset is a house, you can't (generally) sell a few square feet of your house each year. It sounds like this would hurt those with the least ability to pay the most. If you somehow want to exempt those who don't have ability to pay, then there would have to be an income test, which really just brings us back to an income tax.

I have no idea how you could possibly enforce this for assets outside of the US. You'd need an army of investigators to figure out who owns JRTA Holdings in the Dutch Antilles, which you'd need to know in order to figure out who owns ABC Ventures in Brazil, to figure out who owns TPTP Sdn Bhd in Labuan. Or are you under the impression that foreign governments are going to willingly hire their own investigators to track down these relationships purely for the benefit of the US government?

[Warren Stupidity]

11. Gosh how about we just repeal the mother fucking bush-obama tax cuts instead?

You know, the ones that once implemented slid us into a long spiral of unending huge deficits?

[Imajika]

12. Yeah, no thanks...

Sorry, terrible idea.

[madrchsod]

14. nope... flat taxes will be even worse...

[Rincewind]

15. Bad idea.

I'm retired, and already have trouble paying my property taxes, and now you want to raise them even more. This is almost as dumb as proposing a tax on poverty, the poorer you are, the more tax you have to pay.

[Chan790]

18. No.

No. No. No. No. No.

Just in case, I was unclear. No.

The US does not need a regressive tax. It needs a higher marginal rate on the taxes it has now & to restore the capital gains rate to be equal to that on income.

[Cool Logic]

19. "it is incapable of preventing the excessive concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. "

We all know that pure, unbridled, laissez-faire capitalism results in a concentration of wealth.

However, the same concentration of wealth occurs when the rich and the powerful control the economy. Right under our noses our Representatives have allowed the K-Street boys and girls turn our free-market economy into a tightly controlled-market economy that benefits the few, to the detriment of the many. Greed is God, when the rich and the powerful write the rules.

A true free-market economy, is not controlled by the rich or by the poor; rather, it is controlled by the simple law of supply and demand. That means the rules (regulations) are the same for everyone.

However, when the market is over-regulated by the powerful, consumers are not allowed to choose from the best products; they get to choose from products that are produced by companies with the best lobbyists. Or, as is the case with ethanol, we don't have choice; we are forced to buy the product.

For the same reasons we have a separation of church and state, we need some sort of separation of market and state.

[Igel]

21. Oooo.

A federal property "plus" tax.

You're owned by the federal government, lock, stock, and barrel, except for what they let you have. It's the one reason I think real property is a stupid idea. You lose your job or retire and can't pay the taxes (after paying them for 60 years), so the local government comes in at gunpoint to seize and sell your property to benefit the local government.

I can't think of a stupider idea, at least not without giving it some serious thought.

Perhaps having your toilet effluent pumped into a tank on your roof, which provides the water for solar heating unit that supplies your shower and sinks? Saves water, renewable energy, reduces effluent. It's still pretty stupid. Maybe it's stupider, have to think about that for a second.


Nah, after thinking about it, it's still not as stupid. Coming sort of close, though.

[slackmaster]

22. That's the most fucked-up idea I've seen in a long, long time

Thanks for posting it.

[Odin2005]

23. That's the stupidest idea I've ever seen.

[StarsInHerHair]

24. HELL NO! Why should I pay the same amount someone with an Estate does?

no way, unequal & short-sighted.

[pinboy3niner]

26. It appears that the poster has abandoned his or her thread

Well before this point, the poster should have alerted on the OP to request the mods to delete or lock it.

For those who have second thoughts about their OPs: Best solution is to alert on them to either request a specific action or to assign it to the mods' discretion.

[muriel_volestrangler]

27. With "no minimums, exceptions, or deductions", you have to say if you're getting rid of other taxes

Is this replacing local property taxes, for instance? If you own a house (or jointly own, with a mortgage provider - if you only personally pay on the net value of a house after the mortgage value is deducted, then the company will have to pay the rest - and will add it on to what you have to pay them) worth $100,000, then this is $500 per year. And if you rent it, the landlord will add that on to the rent. Unless this replaces property taxes, which are of that magnitude anyway.

You also need to think about what it does to people. For instance, your tax, as you define it, would apply to all savings and check accounts. Looking at a typical bank, you'd need to tie your money up for 2 years or more just to get 0.5% interest. So any money you have for a rainy day will decrease, in nominal terms as well as real ones.

If you say "no exceptions or deductions", does the value of a car count in this too? The contents of your house? Does a loan to to count as someone else's asset? So if you get a loan for a car, do you pay 0.5% of the value each year, and the bank pays 0.5% each year on the outstanding amount of the loan - which they will pass on to you?