Tax discrimination

Discussion in 'Budget & Taxes' started by jor, Feb 16, 2012.

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  1. Anikdote

    Anikdote Well-Known Member

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    You'll have a hard time convincing some folks around here that Equal =/= Fair or just.
     
  2. Roy L

    Roy L Banned

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    No, they are not. Privilege (from the Latin for "private law") makes them unequal. Just as one example, every time government issues a land title, it creates a privilege, giving one private party the legal power to remove everyone else's liberty rights. Your sig block proves that you know this, and want to prevent others from knowing it.
    Yes, well, the law also made some people into slaves and others into slave owners. On your planet, slaves and their owners owed equal amounts of tax, because the law also enabled slaves to own slaves. They just weren't taking advantage of it.

    Grotesquely, sickeningly dishonest and evil.
     
  3. Taxpayer

    Taxpayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    [​IMG]
     
  4. Taxpayer

    Taxpayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Understood. The problem is we don't all have equal lives. As more and more of our lives became part of the equal partnership we have in America, it became harder for some to keep up their equal responsibilities in that partnership. It's a tough pickle.​
     
  5. Anikdote

    Anikdote Well-Known Member

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    If we all benefited from public services equally you'd have a point. We don't though, we're all in the same boat, but we're not all riding in the captains seat and there aren't enough life boats to go around.
     
  6. Roy L

    Roy L Banned

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    What a stupid lie. Equal partners in America would owe equal taxes because they owned equal interests in America:

    "The expense of government to the individuals of a great nation is like the expense of management to the joint tenants of a great estate, who are all obliged to contribute in proportion to their respective interests in the estate. In the observation or neglect of this maxim consists what is called the equality or inequality of taxation." -- Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

    So the more of the country you own, by value, the more you rightly owe, in taxes.

    You're just spewing stupid lie after stupid lie to evade that fact.
     
  7. protectionist

    protectionist Banned

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    Well, obviously, we DON'T want to have an undiscriminating tax system. A litany of polls show that, overwhelmingly. Americans want the rich to pay much more in taxes. And yes, of course, this is discrimination. So ? So is when we discriminate in hundreds of things that are legal and illegal. And when we discriminate between what is am acceptable speed limit and what is not. We "discriminate" in our immigration laws, and that is proper to protect the nation. We discriminate each morning when we choose which shirt to wear and which to not wear. And when we choose a route to travel and to not travel going to work, or to the store.
    Your little ploy of likening discrimination in taxation (a perfectly proper activity) to racial discrimination is about as weak and lame as anything I've ever seen in this forum, and very high on the absurdity list.
     
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  8. danielpalos

    danielpalos Banned

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    It is called, economic discrimination and is both legal and socially acceptable, under any form of Capitalism.
     
  9. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Technically, given dimishing marginal utility of income, we can't say its discrimination. Indeed, unless we have progressive taxation, we'd be discriminating against those lower down the income distribution
     
  10. protectionist

    protectionist Banned

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    Which is why it is good and proper, but of course it is "discrimination". Discrimination is just another word for "choose", that's all.
     
  11. Shiva_TD

    Shiva_TD Progressive Libertarian Past Donor

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    There is only one tax proposal that is both progressive as well as imposing the identical tax criteria on all Americans and it is a federal consumption tax on new goods and services with a prebate. The prebate, which is based upon a specified amount of expendatures required for the necessities multiplied by the tax rate, is what makes the tax progressive. The consumption tax rate is identical for all people.

    Because the prebate is a fixed amount (i.e. expendature level times tax rate) it is far more progressive for low income individuals that spend a far greater amount of gross revenues on necessities. High income earners spend a very low percentage of income on necessities.

    An example of the math behind the prebate can be provided.

    If the "prebate level" was established at $20,000 for a single person household and the tax rate was 25% then every single person household would receive $5000 in prebates annually. For someone only earning $20,000 if they spent every dime of income on "taxable" items the prebate would pay for all of the taxes and they would have a net zero tax liability. If they only spent $15,000 on taxable items then they would actually have $1,250 left over at the end of the year.

    Assuming the same prebate level and tax rate a person with a million dollars in income would also receive that $5000 as a prebate but if they spent all of their income on taxable goods and services they would only be able to purchase roughly $800,000 in goods and would pay $200,000 in taxes. The $5000 prebate would be insigificant based upon their spending and they would be paying almost the entire 25% tax rate.

    From 0% for a $20K/yr person to 25% for a $1M/yr income is clearly a progressive tax.

    Every household, regardless of income receives the identical prebate and every expendature on a new product or service is taxed at the identical rate.

    The consumption tax on new goods and services with a prebate is the only form of taxation where the criteria is identical for everyone but where the tax is also progressive at the same time.
     
  12. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Its not discrimination as its about attempting to treat people equally
     
  13. Shiva_TD

    Shiva_TD Progressive Libertarian Past Donor

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    If there is no discrimination then the identical criteria for taxation must exist for all people regardless of income or wealth.
     
  14. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Identical criteria would have to take into account the diminishing marginal utility of income. It would be discriminatory if it didn't
     
  15. Slyhunter

    Slyhunter New Member Past Donor

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    ie. if a poor person has to spend 75% of his income on survival and taxes than a rich person should also have to spend 75% of their income on taxes and survival? ie. The rich person would spend a larger percent on taxes and a smaller percentage on survival but the total would equal the poor persons outgo.
     
  16. Taxpayer

    Taxpayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    It seems more like it's attempting to treat them unequally, to compensate for an inequality in their person life.​
     
  17. danielpalos

    danielpalos Banned

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    It is called, economic discrimination and is both legal and socially acceptable, under any form of Capitalism.
     
  18. Roy L

    Roy L Banned

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    No, you are just lying. Your sig block proves that you know very well the relevant inequality is an inequality in their ownership interests in the nation, not in their personal lives. It also proves that you want that difference in ownership interest to provide proportionally greater benefits from public spending to those who own larger interests, but not to require proportionally greater responsibility by them for providing those benefits. IOW, you demand that those who own lesser interests be robbed to provide welfare subsidy giveaways to those who own larger interests.

    That is just baldly evil.
     
  19. Roy L

    Roy L Banned

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    If so, then why wouldn't it have to take into account the diminishing marginal utility of wealth? Please explain why the diminishing marginal utility of income is relevant to taxation, but the diminishing marginal utility of wealth is not.
     
  20. Roy L

    Roy L Banned

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    No, that's clearly false.
    But there is no more rationale for taxing consumption than for taxing income at an identical rate for all people after a universal individual exemption -- indeed, there is less, as unlike consumption, some income consists of economic rent, and can thus be taxed away entirely without harming the economy.

    If you grant the prebate per household rather than per individual, you distort the economy by subsidizing spurious, inefficient and undesirable household formation.
    No, that's just clearly false, as proved above.
     
  21. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    An ignorant question. Its a reference to a 'flow' not a 'stock' (i.e. If you take away a dollar, how much does it hurt?)
     
  22. Roy L

    Roy L Banned

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    No, it's a very astute and pertinent question, which is why you can't answer it. It is also why you have to contrive some way to evade it:
    OK, so now you have to contrive some way to evade the same question in a more specifically economic form: why would taxation theory concern itself with flows and not stocks, when the two most fundamental and widely accepted principles of sound taxation policy -- "ability to pay" and "beneficiary pay" -- are both by definition measured by reference to stocks, and not by reference to flows?
     
  23. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    No, it was ignorant. We're referring to taking money away. That is a flow. We therefore have to refer to diminishing marginal utility of income to refer to non-discriminatory practice. All a little obvious (except perhaps a Georgist)!
     
  24. Shiva_TD

    Shiva_TD Progressive Libertarian Past Donor

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    The "prebates" if properly established do take that into account because they make the tax progressive. While the tax rate is identical on the surface because of the prebates it's effect on gross expendatures varies greatly based upon consumption of new goods and services. As I noted in my example that consumption tax with prebates can actually create a subsidy for low income workers that are required to spend virtually all of their income while the same tax can impose virtually a 25% tax (the tax rate I used as an example) for the wealthy that spend huge amounts of money annually.

    Of note it also taxes the wealthy that may today, by choice, have zero income because they no longer require income to live on. A person with $100 million in the bank really doesn't require any income at all as they could live like a virtual king for the rest of their life without income. They'll still spend money but have no need to earn it.
     
  25. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    To what extent? We'd at least need a progressive tax that ensure social wages suitably increase (with the interaction of tax and benefit systems considered)
     
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