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> The parent's comment still applies. If the progressive brackets were just swapped for a flat tax, the tax man still needs to know how much each employee had

> The parent's comment still applies. If the progressive brackets were just swapped for a flat tax, the tax man still needs to know how much each employee had as deductibles, e.g. number of dependents, donations to charity, mortgage interest, etc. No, because the idea behind a flat tax is to eliminate most or all of those deductions, the same way they've already been eliminated for people who pay AMT instead of normal income tax.

bmm6o 8y ago
True in theory, but virtually every mainstream "flat tax" that actually gets to the stage of having a concrete proposal acknowledges the need for deductions. I don't recall ever seeing a true flat tax.
- avar 8y ago
  There's flat tax proposals and implementations at every level of the economy in different countries, not all of them have to do with income tax. E.g. the case of the warm and cold chicken being taxed at different rates, as described in the linked Economist article. It's common in places with such a distinction in the tax code for some stores to sell packaged cold food clearly intended to be eaten on the go, and then to conveniently offer a customer-operated microwave on-site partly as a way to avoid paying a tax that distinguishes between food sold as groceries v.s. take-away food. I'm not advocating for flat taxes, but it is correct to say that such proposals in general do away with such emergent absurdities, and decrease the need for government bureaucracy.
  - chc 8y ago
    This thread is specifically talking about tax plans from Republicans in the US Congress.
  - bmm6o 8y ago
    That there are gray areas (groceries vs restaurants) that can be difficult or because the math is slightly more challenging are not persuasive arguments, to me. As universal as a "flat" income tax having deductions are sales taxes having exemptions, so they also are never "flat" in practice either.
- bmm6o 8y ago
  And at that point, you've pretty much acknowledged that a true flat tax is unfair and regressive, and now we're just arguing over how many tax brackets there should be. You want there to be 1 but propose 2 with no argument for why 2 is the optimal number. While I agree that there is marginal complexity with each one, that only affects people who do their own taxes by hand. Structure it so that most people are covered by the bottom 4, say, and I have no problem with a dozen or more.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > While I agree that there is marginal complexity with each one, that only affects people who do their own taxes by hand. The complexity of the formula generating the lookup table doesn't affect the users of the lookup table, so I disagree: number of brackets has no meaningful effect on complexity of manual preparation.
maxxxxx 8y ago
"No, because the idea behind a flat tax is to eliminate most or all of those deductions," Removing deductions has nothing to do with the tax curve. You could do that with the current curve and tweak it accordingly.
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > Removing deductions has nothing to do with the tax curve. You could do that with the current curve and tweak it accordingly. In theory, but (serious) advocates of the flat tax generally are proposing both.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    My impression is that most advocates want the flat part which reduces taxes on high incomes and then are pretty hand wavy about deductions.
    - laingc 8y ago
      This might be the case in the US, but be aware that most advocates of flat taxes globally - including almost all economists who do so - advocate precisely for removing deductions. In New Zealand, for example, all prominent advocates of flat taxes are also proponents of not following Australia or the UK's example of having GST/VAT exemptions for some categories of goods.
- lutorm 8y ago
  Sure it does, because if you have deductions, your effective tax rate isn't actually flat.
- philwelch 8y ago
  In fact, removing itemized deductions alone would do this, because the standard deduction is mathematically equivalent to a 0% bracket. Alternately, you could even have a progressive, flat tax with a standard deduction of $150,000 and like a 40% rate. I’m surprised the Democrats haven’t proposed that just as a publicity stunt.

bmm6o 8y ago

True in theory, but virtually every mainstream "flat tax" that actually gets to the stage of having a concrete proposal acknowledges the need for deductions. I don't recall ever seeing a true flat tax.

avar 8y ago
There's flat tax proposals and implementations at every level of the economy in different countries, not all of them have to do with income tax. E.g. the case of the warm and cold chicken being taxed at different rates, as described in the linked Economist article. It's common in places with such a distinction in the tax code for some stores to sell packaged cold food clearly intended to be eaten on the go, and then to conveniently offer a customer-operated microwave on-site partly as a way to avoid paying a tax that distinguishes between food sold as groceries v.s. take-away food. I'm not advocating for flat taxes, but it is correct to say that such proposals in general do away with such emergent absurdities, and decrease the need for government bureaucracy.
- chc 8y ago
  This thread is specifically talking about tax plans from Republicans in the US Congress.
- bmm6o 8y ago
  That there are gray areas (groceries vs restaurants) that can be difficult or because the math is slightly more challenging are not persuasive arguments, to me. As universal as a "flat" income tax having deductions are sales taxes having exemptions, so they also are never "flat" in practice either.
bmm6o 8y ago
And at that point, you've pretty much acknowledged that a true flat tax is unfair and regressive, and now we're just arguing over how many tax brackets there should be. You want there to be 1 but propose 2 with no argument for why 2 is the optimal number. While I agree that there is marginal complexity with each one, that only affects people who do their own taxes by hand. Structure it so that most people are covered by the bottom 4, say, and I have no problem with a dozen or more.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > While I agree that there is marginal complexity with each one, that only affects people who do their own taxes by hand. The complexity of the formula generating the lookup table doesn't affect the users of the lookup table, so I disagree: number of brackets has no meaningful effect on complexity of manual preparation.

maxxxxx 8y ago

"No, because the idea behind a flat tax is to eliminate most or all of those deductions," Removing deductions has nothing to do with the tax curve. You could do that with the current curve and tweak it accordingly.

chimeracoder 8y ago
> Removing deductions has nothing to do with the tax curve. You could do that with the current curve and tweak it accordingly. In theory, but (serious) advocates of the flat tax generally are proposing both.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  My impression is that most advocates want the flat part which reduces taxes on high incomes and then are pretty hand wavy about deductions.
  - laingc 8y ago
    This might be the case in the US, but be aware that most advocates of flat taxes globally - including almost all economists who do so - advocate precisely for removing deductions. In New Zealand, for example, all prominent advocates of flat taxes are also proponents of not following Australia or the UK's example of having GST/VAT exemptions for some categories of goods.
lutorm 8y ago
Sure it does, because if you have deductions, your effective tax rate isn't actually flat.
philwelch 8y ago
In fact, removing itemized deductions alone would do this, because the standard deduction is mathematically equivalent to a 0% bracket. Alternately, you could even have a progressive, flat tax with a standard deduction of $150,000 and like a 40% rate. I’m surprised the Democrats haven’t proposed that just as a publicity stunt.