Originally posted by: zendari
Anything other than flat tax isn't the best and fairest taxform.
Ah, but take that logic to the end and you'd actually support a REgressive tax, not a flat one. Think about it, let's say I make $100k per year and you make $50k per year. I'm not Bill Gates, you aren't dirt poor. We could live in the same town, although you'd probably have a smaller house, we both drive to work at the same company, but I probably have a nicer car. Overall, though, we probably have about the same cost to society. We use roads, schools, and police and fire services equally. Yet even under a flat tax, I'd pay twice as much in taxes as you would. Is that "fair"? Our impact on society is about the same, why do I have twice as much obligation to contribute as you do, simply because I make more money? I can't really see a valid argument there, assuming you accept the idea that taxes are supposed to be "fair" in the sense that no one bears an undue burden in the tax system.
Of course that's not how the system works, even your flat tax system is based on relative costs of taxation. In my example, a flat tax assumes a dollar is worth about half as much to me as it is to you, so the perceived cost I have of paying $10,000 in taxes is the same perceived cost you have of paying $5,000 dollars in taxes. A flat tax is "fair" in this case because, while I pay more, each dollar I pay is worth less to me than it would be to you. So everyone paying 10% is fair, because 10% has the same impact on everyone, even though it represents a different amount of money to each person, because it represents the same relative amount.
Ah, but there's a hole in that logic. I remember arguing with my high school economics professor over this very topic. He made a flat tax argument in class, based on most of the traditional "fairness" arguments used by a lot of flat tax supporters and that I crudely outlined above. I suggested that there was a problem with that argument, the relative costs aren't accurate because the decline in the value of a dollar plotted against income isn't flat. Again going back to my example case, that $10,000 is actually worth LESS to me than the $5,000 is to you. This is because the basic costs of living don't rise at a flat rate. As income rises, the basic costs become less and less a percentage of income. Food, for example, is a significant expense to a poorer family, while it is a minor one to a rich family, even though the rich family almost certainly eats far better. This means that the more money you have, the more disposable income you have, so a flat tax rate means that the less money you have, the MORE taxes cost you.
A flat tax is based on an ideal world that simply doesn't exist. A truly fair tax system takes into account more variables than income. We might not be at that point now, but a system based around reality, instead of one number, seems like a better choice.