Is the United States an under-taxed or over-taxed society? Or is it just right but inefficiently collected and distributed.
I know for people of the leftist persuasion the answer is the former. They feel the deficit problem is a revenue one and it is so because not enough taxes (on the wealthy) are being collected or levied. One small problem with this: The rich already pay the majority of all taxes while about 50% of the country doesn't pay at all.
If you're on the other side of the argument, you argue that it's over-taxed given all the taxes (sometimes taxes paid on taxes) once amalgamated in its totality actually erodes discretionary income.
Over-taxed, and it doesn't matter what other countries taxes are, either (although I understand the US has one of the highest corporate tax rates). On the 50% who don't pay taxes I would quibble a bit, as they do pay things like sales and of course Social Security taxes, which can eat up quite a bit of one's paycheck. I make less than $40,000 a year and pay over $10,000 a year in taxes (that's all taxes combined, not just the income tax).
ReplyDelete25% of your paycheck is outrageous. Of course, people don't do the exercise like you do. Too focused on coercing more taxes out of people who don't pay their 'fair share.' My property taxes are at 5% of gross household pay and from there you just add it all up. It crashes through 50% in a heartbeat. Here, we had corrupt politicians who kept increasing taxes not to improve services but to make up the shortfall they were skimming from. Yet, we blindly accept it because we're so addicted to the enabling state.
ReplyDelete