SENATE BILL: Income Tax Reform Act of 2014 (Failed)

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

If removing the charitable donation deduction is fine with everyone, I am willing to support that for the sake of economic efficiency. Obviously, I'd never support a 90% tax rate on any bracket, but you all already knew that.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

The rates are certainly debatable. I did not do much high level analysis before I posted the bill. My bar preparations have really taken the front burner for me recently. However, I saw the debate in the senate slowing, the queue drying up, and I generally don't agree with any tax rate that takes over 50% of someone's income, because it is inefficient, so I introduced this. I'm happy it's at least generating some debate and discussion.

If this ends up being too regressive, I am more than willing to adjust some things. I am a big believer in a progressive tax system, but I also wanted to broaden the base while eliminating many loopholes the super wealthy sometimes take advantage of at the moment.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

Right, as I said, these rates and deductions are debatable. I want to broaden the base and lower overall rates while eliminating loopholes, but since this original draft seems to be more regressive, I think it would be fine to edit them slightly so we can achieve the end goal.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

Are we removing deductions for dependents?

The goal here was to simplify our code, so yes. But that may have unintended consequences. I am up front about haven't given any deep thought to this. I am only concerned about the bar exam in my life right now.

But hey, I introduced this to have a debate. Have your seen how empty our queue is recently?

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

At this time, if we don't eliminate many deductions, we really can't afford to cut our income taxes, unfortunately. And of course, I won't push through a tax cut we cannot afford even though I still find a 60% top bracket as being too high.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

I have been wanting to discuss this with thr President in detail, but we seem to never be on at the same time this past few days and thus we catch each other's messages when the other is off.

I'm always around during the day, which I know isn't always the case for you.

Since bar study began, I really haven't left my house or my computer all that often.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

I can live with that. We also need to adjust the rates so they aren't as unprogressive as they turned out to be in the first draft.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

Yeah I am starting to agree with the folks here. While I feel that a 60% bracket is entirely too high, given Atlasia's current spending on all kinds of social welfare, I think it would be hard to cut them without severely hurting our budget. I don't remember if we were running a surplus on the last budget Nix prepared a year ago, but I can't imagine we still are.

I attempted to do for income taxes what we did for corporate taxes, but those are two totally different beasts. I am too tired and too preoccupied with other things to really dedicate much time to figuring out how to make this work. When you've been up since 8am studying and you're just now finishing 80 multiple choice problems at midnight, you just don't care anymore.