Back                                                                         Taxes

I've been hearing a lot about a fair tax (National Sales Tax) and a flat tax (one tax rate for everybody.)  People, use your heads. If the cost of government is a set rate, you have to raise that amount of money. Now you can, as we do now, have a system that is progressive (i.e. the more you make the more you pay.) you can get the wealthiest to pay a larger portion of the expenses. Ok So you call it discriminatory, class warfare, but is it really. If that's the case, then maybe, just maybe, the war has already began. When I was a union rep' negotiating a contract with management and they refused to give us a raise even though the company had made record breaking profits that year. I felt like they were at war with my union.

I seem to have drifted away from the topic. So you want a flat tax. If you in the middle or even upper middle class you have to be willing to take a loss. A flat tax will let the rich pay less and everybody else will have to make up the difference, even if the government cuts spending.

Say the government cuts spending by a third. If they keep the same tax structure as we have now your taxes would go down, everybody's would, but the wealthiest would still pay a higher rate then you. When you have a flat tax you will have to make up for the amount of money that the rich save. If you watch who is pushing the idea of a flat tax, you'll see that it's people like Steve Forbes. People just think how much money he would save on his taxes! Would you like to help make up his savings?

Let's move on to the fair tax. Do you really think that the richest people in the country spend the same percentage of their income as you do. Hell, If I can put five percent of my income away a month I'm lucky and I have a nice income.

Now if we spend 95 percent of our income we would probably be honest and pay our sales tax. Do you really think the wealthy would buy their yachts in the states or even register them here. Many of the American owned yachts I've seen in Miami and the Florida Keys have foreign registrations. (The only reason you would register a yacht in a foreign country is to avoid paying state sales tax. The same would go for a national sales tax.)

People let's not let the rich pull the wool over our eyes. Our tax system is the fairest we can have.

I've been hearing a lot about small business and how it would be hurt by taxing people making over $250,000. All I can say to that is "Bull". People any business expense is deductible and not taxed. ie: payroll, maintenance, health care for their workers, stock, investment, research, etc. is all tax exempt. All that would be taxed is personal gain, (Income)

As an importer I know a lot of people who run their own small businesses. What I don't know are many who clear over $200.000. We also have to remember that we have a progressive tax. (That means you pay one rate until you reach a different plateau of taxes and at that time you pay the higher rate, only on the money above that level. All the money below that level is still taxed at the lower rate.)

Now the Republicans are saying that it (Raising taxes) will cause small businesses to lay off workers. I disagree and here's why. Small business makes money by having people do the work they charge for and the more people they manage the more work they can get done and the more income they bring in.

Let's say you run a lawn service and have four employees. Each employee can cut four large lawns in a day. You can take care of 16 lawns. You pay each employee $10.00 an hour or $80 a day and you charge $50 for each lawn.  16 X $50 = $800.00  and you pay 4 X $80 = $320. so your profit would be $800 - $320. or $480. Are you going to tell me that you would lay off a worker who is making you ($200 - $ 80.) $120.00 just because he puts you in a tax bracket that increases your taxes only on the money you have to pay to be in that higher bracket. That would be cutting off your nose to spite the tax collector.

People, before we believe everything we hear, let's take the time to reason things out. Wouldn't it be better tax policy to give the tax breaks to the little guy who might (Because he has extra money) just hire the guy with the lawn service to cut his grass so he can go play golf. The lawn guy would have to hire someone to cut his grass and the golf course would make money. That's how we build the economy.