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The Uneasy Case for Progressive Taxation If you think it’s “obvious” that progressive taxes are better/worse than flat taxes this is an excellent look at the e

• tzs 7y ago
  If instead of doing one tax to cover your whole budget, you do it is separate taxes for each item applied serially [1], and each of those taxes is a flat rate tax [2] that applies to income above a base amount [3], so that you are paying thousands of separate taxes, each with a very low flat rate, then when you look at the net result it is equivalent to a progressive bracket system with a lot of narrow brackets. That probably says something interesting about the relationship of flat rate tax systems (as usually proposed) and progressive rate tax systems, although I'm not sure what. [1] What I mean by "applied serially" is you take you income, and apply the first tax. Your income minus the tax amount becomes the income for the second tax, and so on. [2] I say "flat rate" rather than simply "flat" because almost no one ever actually proposes a flat tax, which would be the same tax amount regardless of income. [3] ...which makes it not really a flat rate, but rather a progressive tax with two brackets. I think that every serious "flat" tax proposal I've seen has been this way, so that's what I'm using.