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That would likely significantly lower federal tax revenue and shift an even bigger burden of taxes onto lower income folks. We could adopt a graduated taxation
by munk-a 4y ago
That would likely significantly lower federal tax revenue and shift an even bigger burden of taxes onto lower income folks. We could adopt a graduated taxation system with 1000 gradients of slowly increasing brackets - as long as a computer can "if 18 < x AND x < 20" through the whole list having a reasonably progressive tax bracket system isn't a real cost - it's all the exemptions and BS that make things a pain... basically "I'm sure there's some other definitions that need to be added to this" is where the demons live in your idea - and they're big demons. The basic graduated tax brackets are as clear as water and trivial to implement.
- nonethewiser 4y agoYou need to know how much to withhold for taxes. 1000 brackets makes things a lot more complicated. Edit: the fact that it requires software proves my point. No one thinks it’s a difficult programming problem.
- munk-a 4y agoI build software for a living - building a program to take a list of 1000 brackets and compute the graduated tax rate would take about fifteen minutes (in a vacuum). This is not a real problem. (In response to your edit) Do you think accountants are currently working by slide rule? The tax code is currently extremely corrupted by loopholes and exceptions. My original hyperbolic statement was to highlight that the graduation of income tax is dirt simple. We've currently got seven tax brackets and it is trivial to calculate what you're going to owe based on them, even if we pushed seven to a thousand it's still a trivial calculation to run.
- nonethewiser 4y agoYou shouldn’t need to be an account to know how much to withhold either
- bigfishrunning 4y agoOr, stop withholding taxes and bill people monthly (or quarterly). Why should the government make the interest on money that should be in my account?
- koolba 4y agoThey should stop all withholdings and change the tax deadline to be the week before general elections. Imagine the political seismic shift when people head to polls realizing how much their government is taking out of their pockets.
- nonethewiser 4y agoThat’s hilarious, I love it
- lesuorac 4y agoI'm not sure it'll work that way. There's a lot of people who want the government to stay out of medicare ... People might feel like not-heres-ville shouldn't get government funding for whatever project but when it comes to any less funding for heres-ville there will be complaints. Its basically reverse NIMBY. You think Iowans want the government to do less weather prediction or crop testing?
- dragonwriter 4y ago> You need to know how much to withhold for taxes. So? Withholding formulas can be separate from the main tax formula (heck, they can be “withhold at your personal overall rate for the prior year”.) > 1000 brackets makes things a lot more complicated. For whom? > the fact that it requires software proves my point. It only requires software to generate the tax tables. Every other use can just use the lookup tables.