Why can’t we all play the same in taxes? Why can’t an 8 year old be charged like a 28? Because we may all be people but our lives are not equal. We may fight for equal rights, but our life styles, our paychecks, and our ages are not the same. If I make a $100,000 and you make $1,000 a month and we both have to pay 10 percent in taxes. Even though my $1,000 is more than your $100, your $100 is a greater sacrifice. Yes making a flat tax would be simpler but it does mean it would be better.
Herman Cain proposes a flat tax that he calls 999. The simplicity of it’s meaning, it’s catchy slogan, and people’s frustration of over wordy policies is causing people to take a second look. Americans are feed up with federal loopholes and tax breaks for corporations, they feel that have gotten the short end of the stick. The current tax system is complicated just to be complicated and Cain’s proposal is a way to simplify things, making it understandable.
According to the Chicago Tribune, Cain's plan would scrap the current tax system and levy a flat 9% tax on businesses, income and sales. It would eliminate the capital gains tax and the inheritance tax and require some lower-income people who pay minimal — if any — income taxes to fork over 9%, the same rate that would be paid by the richest Americans, whose incomes are currently taxed at 35%. Scrapping the current tax system would make it easier for taxpayers to comply with the Internal Revenue Service, and harder for them to avoid paying taxes. According to the LA Times, Cain said scrapping the current federal tax code —, which he described as a “10-million-word mess” — would eliminate a host of invisible taxes and eventually reduce prices.
Just because it looks simple doesn’t mean there’s not a catch.
Michelle Bachman warns that a flat sales tax could just be another way for Congress to take money from taxpayers, while Rick Santorum accuses Cain of "giving Washington a huge new tax burden. Jon Huntsman urges that we need something that’s doable, while pushing for a proposal that will lower the income tax rate on the top bracket of earners to 25% from 35% and phase out corporate subsidies.
The hopes of this plan, or should I say the desired out of this plan in that by lowering the tax burden on the wealthy, we hope it will encourage them to invest and spend more, ultimately boosting the economy. Yet Edward Kleinbard says that Americans will ultimately find that Cain’s simplicity is misleading presenting them with "a terrific example of fiscal hocus pocus."
The 999 plan would shift the tax burden from the wealthy to the poor and middle class, according to Kleinbard's analysis. A family of four making $120,000, for example, would pay $800 more in taxes under the plan. Lower-income taxpayers would be even worse off.
"Some people will pay more. But most people will pay less," said the former Godfather’s Pizza executive and a former chairman of the board of directors for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City when pressed by host David Gregory about the effects of his tax plan.
I guess the bottom line is what is Cain’s definition of some and it’s relationship to most, because I’d hate to be lumped up into that ‘some’ category paying a great deal more because of the 999 plan.
The 999 plan would shift the tax burden from the wealthy to the poor and middle class, according to Kleinbard's analysis. A family of four making $120,000, for example, would pay $800 more in taxes under the plan. Lower-income taxpayers would be even worse off.
"Some people will pay more. But most people will pay less," said the former Godfather’s Pizza executive and a former chairman of the board of directors for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City when pressed by host David Gregory about the effects of his tax plan.
I guess the bottom line is what is Cain’s definition of some and it’s relationship to most, because I’d hate to be lumped up into that ‘some’ category paying a great deal more because of the 999 plan.
So Cain tell me what percentage equals some and what percentage equates to more, how great is the difference. Just how helpful is the 999 plan?
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