I came to the same conclusion with my very crude analysis earlier. I've read
this kind of thing before but never with numbers to back it up. I think I
estimated that the flat tax would have to be 26%, and according to the IRS 2010
tax tables that corresponds to a taxable income of somewhere above $60k. (I'm
assuming that the 26% includes FICA, the current tax computations are in
addition to FICA.)
And this has never been explained to all of the people on the lower end, the
ones that the media whips into a frenzy with talk about "tax cuts for the
wealthy". I never understood this because most people in the media are on the
wrong side of this. And I would guess that "poor disadvantaged Obama" is in
the upper percentile of rich politicians in Washington. When I hear how the
poor think that 2 rich lawyers are going to help them, I start to feel ill.
> And for all of you flat tax fans, chew on this: if everybody pays the same
> percentage of their income in taxes, that means that the people who make the
> most money pay less and the people who make the least pay more. So, unless
> you are a CEO of a large corporation or a hedge fund manager or anybody else
> making mega-bucks, your taxes are going up. The more you make and the more
> you can afford to pay, the less you will pay. The less you make and the
> less you can afford to pay more taxes, the more you will have to pay.
|