Quote:
Originally Posted by DTM
Under my government, here's how that would work: In April, you'd fill out your tax return, but it would not include a computation of the tax, just a report of income, deductions, etc. that would be used to calculate your taxable income. The IRS would report to Congress the total amount of taxable income available. Congress would spend as it sees fit, then determine the fraction of available taxable income that represents. Every taxpayer would then be sent a bill for that fraction of their taxable income.
So if there were $20 trillion in taxable income and Congress decides to spend $4 trillion, that's 20%. If your taxable income is $20,000, you'd get a bill for $4,000. We accept cash, checks and credit cards, thank you.
Under that system, anyone who demanded that the government spend money on anything would intrinsically be demanding to hit everyone with a tax increase. And anyone who wanted a tax cut would have to do it by identifying the spending to be cut. And the budget would always balance.
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I don't think our congress would act responsibly enough for this to work, especially considering they've passed legislation allowing for a 13 or 14 trillion dollar debt, about the size of the US economy today.
I think they'd see that as "Oh, there's 20 trillion dollars out there we can spend, let's do it"... And then we'd all get hit with a bill asking for ALL our money.
Nah, this plan scares the heck out of me and I'm glad I've never heard of it until now.