The greatest tax code ever conceived

wyman856 · 3日前

Okay, this is my first time attempting one of these and I am sure others can better elaborate than myself on the topic.

R1 -

First of all, all of OPs many income tax brackets are chosen seemingly arbitrarily other than increasing 5% at every randomly chosen interval.

Income tax applies to all forms of income with no exceptions.

Not sure what he means by this. Is that supposed to include dividends and capital gains? My suspicion is it is, but I really am not fit to speculate further on intent.

As /u/healthcareeconomist3 already pointed out, taxing capital is bad, imagine what Warren Buffet would do if he actually had to pay an 80% capital gains tax...

OP also has this strange affinity for tariffs. Economists agree free trade is beneficial due to the ensuing lowering of prices that occurs from opening borders. The only concerns we should have are temporary labor disruptions that occur in industries that lose tariffs, as they may not be better off.

Regardless, we do not attempt to construct a giant dome to block out the sun just because it would be beneficial for light bulb manufacturers in the U.S. That is essentially how free trade works.

Economists also agree corporate taxes are bad because corporations are not the ones (or at least not the only ones) who pay them. Tax incidence exists, and evidence indicates a large chunk of it falls on labor, not the wealthy. Cutting it expands the tax base, output, real wages, and investment over time.

And shoot, I'm running out of time here to comment so hopefully others can take over. Here are a select few more of OP's proposals.

Value Added Tax: 10% = 1.771 trillion/year -applies to all goods, services, and purchases. Financial Transactions Tax: 0.1% on all stock transactions = 117 billion/year Derivatives Transaction Tax: 0.2% on all derivatives transactions Derivatives Holding Wealth Tax: 2% on all derivatives-based assets in banks = 3.64 trillion/year

potato1 · 3日前

Income Tax Deductions: 1) A family with children pays no income tax on first $50,000 of income. 2) Any individual with children pays no income tax on first $25,000 of income. 3) Any family with adult dependents pays no income tax on first $100,000 of income 4) Any individual with adult dependents pays no income tax on first $50,000 of income.

So from this I can only conclude that he thinks that it's twice as expensive for two-parent households to raise children as it is for single-parent households? Do children who have two parents eat twice as much, use twice as much school supplies, require twice as much medical care, and poop twice as often or something?

Payroll Tax: 1 trillion

What does this mean?????

Definition of a U.S. corporation: Any company that makes revenue off of sales to consumers in the U.S. It is possible to be a "Partial U.S. corporation" (which is what most would be). If a company makes 50% of its revenue from sales to consumers in the U.S. it pays the U.S. corporate income tax on that portion of its income. If a company makes 20% of its revenue from selling to U.S. consumers, it pays U.S. corporate income tax on that portion of its income Etc...

Special Clause for tax evaders: Any corporation suspected of evading taxes by loaning profits to subsidiaries in foreign countries or by holding profits in offshore bank accounts will be penalized as follows

So foreign companies with US subsidiaries have to pay US corporate income tax on their income from their operations outside the US?

The tax brackets are much wider than today's tax brackets - the maximum number on each tax bracket is double the minimum number. This is to reduce prevent disincentivizing trying to make more money because it would require making more than double to get to a new tax bracket.

This isn't even a coherent sentence, let alone a coherent tax policy.

Integralds · 3日前

I propose that anyone proposing a new tax code be forced to read Dimensions of Tax Design and Tax By Design before writing up their plan.

This includes everyone from redditors to elected officials.

Integralds · 2日前

Okay to be constructive, here's my tax plan:

Progressive consumption tax, at whatever rate schedule Auerbach, Kotlikoff, Feldstein, Diamond, Saez, and Orszag can mutually agree upon.
Eat all the free lunches. Put a bunch of enviro economists in a room and have them crank out the optimal carbon tax. Same with alcohol and other bads.
No tariffs, no income tax, no corporate income tax, no capital gains tax, etc, etc. Just a progressive consumption tax.
Get a bunch of lawyers, tax accountants, and tax economists in a room to figure out how to tax consumption in a manner that is reasonably transparent and easy to implement.
Maybe carve out a standard deduction, charitable giving deduction, and small miscellaneous pet deductions because my pet deductions are obviously welfare-enhancing, while your pet deductions are obviously political rent-seeking.

gorbachev · 3日前

That's impressively arbitrary.

CutOffUrJohnson · 3日前

Corporations, rich people, investors, private ownership and everybody that isn't from my country is evil! Tax the living shit out of them!

MoneyChurch · 3日前

Worker coops pay no corporate income tax.

I can see exactly how that will turn out. I'm reminded of a JPE back cover quote:

The result was retail chaos. At, for instance, the supermarket, shoppers would no longer purchase three large bags of groceries for $78 total and submit to paying 6, 6.8 and 8.5 percent on those parts of their purchases over $5.00, $20.00 and $42.01, respectively—they were now motivated to structure their grocery purchase as numerous separate small purchases of $4.99 or less in order to take advantage of the much more attractive 3.75 percent sales tax on purchases under $5.00. . . . So at the store, you suddenly had everyone buying under $5.00 worth of groceries and running out to their car and putting the little bag in the car and running back in and buying another amount under $5.00 and buying another amount under $5.00 and running out to their car, and so on and so forth. Supermarkets’ checkout lines started going all the way to the back of the store. . . . I know gas stations were even worse . . . fights broke out at gas stations from drivers being forced to wait as people ahead of them at the pump tried putting $4.99 worth in and running in and paying and running back out and resetting the pump and putting in another $4.99, and so on. . . . From the perspective of administrative costs, the worst part came when enterprising businesses saw a new opportunity and started using “Subdividable!” as a sales inducement. Including, for instance, used-car dealers that were willing to sell you a car as an agglomeration of separate little transactions for front bumper, right rear wheel well, alternator coil, spark plug, and so on, the purchase structure as thousands of different $4.99 transactions.

Cutlasss · 2日前

Just scanning it briefly I can tell you it's more complicated than optimal.

anarchism4thewin · 2日前

Why do these cowards always delete their accounts?

absinthe718 · 1日前

Picking a tax rate then figuring out what to do with the money sounds like bad politics as much as bad economics.

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