Opinion of flat tax rates?

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

Personally I'd be fine with a 15% flat tax (it would actually bring in more revenue). Paying 15% of your income and that's it without different income tax brackets and complicated deductions and stuff benefiting the rich.

[TheReckoning]

Horrible idea, for the simple reason that the poor shouldn’t be paying any taxes at all, but obviously taxes have to come from somewhere.

[DavidB.]

Good idea. We need to move towards taxing wealth instead of income.

[parochial boy]

A terrific way of reducing the living standards of the majority in order to benefit a tiny elite.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

A terrific way of reducing the living standards of the majority in order to benefit a tiny elite.

lol it's not like we can go much lower.

[GregTheGreat657]

HI. Even Reagan said the millionaire should pay more in taxes than the bus driver.

[Matt24]

Awful.

[Blue3]

Not good.

Not the worst (worse would be: no income tax, or just sales tax, or just property tax) but not good.

Brackets aren't complicated or hurtful. All the deductions, credits, and other "tax expenditures" have a lot of flaws. That's what makes the system complex, if your goal is simplicity.

[courts]

generally oppose

[CumbrianLefty]

Good idea. We need to move towards taxing wealth instead of income.

The second statement (which will get widespread agreement) simply does not fit with the first.

[Lambsbread]

A great idea for people who have very simple minds.

[Meclazine for Israel]

I would prefer consumption tax of 15% on all goods except food.

A consumption tax is efficient and far-reaching.

Business do all the work for you as they collect it.

If you start with $100. Then one purchase and you have $14 for the government. Then the next person has $86  if they spend it, then the Government gets another $13, and so on.

If poor people spend less money, they pay less tax as they don't consume as much.

If a rich person buys a $100,000 car, then they pay $15,000 to the Government.

If a drug dealer buys a $1M car with proceeds of crime, then the Government gets $150,000.

It saved the economy so much paperwork.

[Xing]

The extremely wealthy don’t need even more help.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Horrible idea, for the simple reason that the poor shouldn’t be paying any taxes at all, but obviously taxes have to come from somewhere.

You could have a standard deduction of 20k or whatever.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Absolutely not. What we should do is make the rich pay taxes on unrealized gains.

[LordLarry]

Only permissible if that flat rate is zero.

Absolutely not. What we should do is make the rich pay taxes on unrealized gains.

Absolutely brain dead policy.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Remarkably idiotic idea that should have died long ago if powerful people didn't have a vested interest in keeping it alive.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

If you calculate what the average American pays (like 13.5%), add a bit to that 15%, and end all deductions after the following:

-$30,000 standard deduction (if you make $15 per hour or less you pay nothing, which is a decrease of up to 20% for some).
-$2,000 food deduction (for one, double that up to $10,000)

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

If you calculate what the average American pays (like 13.5%), add a bit to that 15%, and end all deductions after the following:

-$30,000 standard deduction (if you make $15 per hour or less you pay nothing, which is a decrease of up to 20% for some).
-$2,000 food deduction (for one, double that up to $10,000)

Even ignoring the "food deduction," a flat tax rate of 23% (or 25% if you retain the EITC) with no preferential treatment for LTCG would be required to maintain revenue neutrality per Splitwise.¹

People tend to underestimate how much of the federal tax burden is paid by people making low six figures (30-35%), and by exempting a huge portion of their income, you have to make their rates higher to make up for it because ultimately they still need to pay it if everyone else is going to pay less. At the end of the day, this is a huge giveaway to the ultra rich (and to an extent the lower middle class in the form of a $1-2k that could be better distributed through CTCs and other direct payments) while taking a chunk from the UMC. You bring the top 1% down by three percentage points and bump up 95th to 75th percentile by three percentage points

Further, mindlessly banning personal deductions is not good policy (let alone ever implementable) because they are a great tool for influencing behaviors that policymakers want to encourage. There is good reason for LTCG to be slightly below the marginal rate too.

¹ Revenue neutrality assumed against TCJA, which cut personal taxes by approximately $50B per year. Adds 21k to 2012 standard deduction by using a 0% bracket on top of built in standard deduction. You can validate this by looking at 2019 tax return data the proposed total deductions increases from about $3 trillion to $6.5 trillion, meaning approximately 20% - but these are high-level assumptions as well