Would You Support / Oppose These Tax Reforms?

As of now, income earned from labor is taxed at or near 35% while income earned from stocks, capital gains and dividends is only taxed at 15%. Under this reform, the tax on income earned from labor would be dropped to 25% and the tax on income earned from investing would be raised to 25%.
Support or Oppose?

The US currently has one of the highest Corporate Income Tax rates in the World. Under these reforms, the Corporate Income Tax rate would be dropped to 30%, but we would end Corporate Subsidies (aka Corporate Welfare) and close all tax loop holes completely. A Corporation could reach a maximum low of 25% tax rate if they adhere to more stringent environmental regulations and cut their carbon emissions, etc.
Support or oppose?

Under these reforms the tax code would be simplified as follows and applied to both income earned from labor and from investing.
$1-25,000- 1%
$25,000- 100,000- 2.5%
$100,000-500,000- 5%
$500,000-1,500,000- 10%
$1,500,000- 3,000,000- 15%

$3,000,000-4,500,000- 20%
$4,500,000- 6,000,000- 25%
$6,000,000-7,500,000+ 30%

Support or Oppose?

Support! Sounds like fair progressive Keynesian taxation. A similar structure, though with higher taxes for the wealthiest, existed after World War II and before Reagan and it brought the highest increase for the middle class.

The proportion of taxes paid by Corporations has steadily decreased. By 2002, the portion of federal revenue coming from corporate taxes had fallen to below 10 percent--down from approximately 33 percent during the Eisenhower administration.

Overall, in 2002, the IRS assessed just 22 negligence penalties against 2.5 million U.S. corporations, a decline of more than 99 percent from 1993, when nearly 2,400 penalties--a pitifully low number itself--were imposed. Meanwhile, corporations have been using legal tax shelters and creative "massaging" of tax laws to get away with tens of billions.

Take "inversion." In an inversion, a U.S.-based corporation creates an offshore subsidiary for about $27,000 (the cost of a mail drop, usually in Bermuda)--and then transforms the subsidiary into the corporate parent.

Presto--the U.S. company becomes the subsidiary of the new, offshore company, which escapes paying U.S. taxes by charging its "subsidiary" for everything from management services to use of the corporate logo. What would have been taxable profits are transformed into tax deductions.

Companies that have inverted include the now-bankrupt Tyco and Global Crossing--which also, as it turns out, "inverted" much of their stockholders鈥?investments and employees鈥?pensions into corporate executives鈥?pockets at the same time. Tyco, for example, estimated that it saved about $450 million in taxes every year after it made Bermuda its "headquarters" in 1997.

Tax cuts for working wage earners would at least offset a little of the wage losses suffered through neoliberalism.

"Studies by economists with the Economics Policy Institute report that as of 2006, the most recent data, the typical American family's income remained $1,000 below its peak in 2000. Six years of "economic recovery" were unable to put the real median family income back to its previous peak. The combination of massive indebtedness, offshoring job loss, and recession is likely to produce further decline in US living standards.

Last month (December 2007) the Congressional Budget Office released its report on household incomes. The CBO data show that 80% of Americans have experienced a falling share of US income, and that the top 1% of the income distribution has received almost the entire income gain of the top 20% of Americans. Keep in mind that some of this measured income gain is in reality phantom income according to the research of Susan Houseman.

An economy that concentrates its income gains at the very top while wiping out high value-added jobs by sending them abroad, thus dismantling the ladders of upward mobility, is an economy headed for serious troubles even without subprime derivative and currency problems.

All of the presidential candidates currently in the running have authoritarian personalities. America's next president is likely to seize upon rising domestic economic hardship and growing resistance abroad to US hegemony to complete the dismantling of America's constitutional system."

It wouldn't raise enough money. The rates are too low and the rollover points too high.

I support the total opposition our country's founders had against any direct unapportioned tax, which includes the tax on our labor. Only two types of taxes were allowed by the Constitution. Direct apportioned by population of the states, and only intended for emergency situations....and indirect and uniform throughout the country. I totally support the objection that the founders had against a direct tax that is not apportioned by population. They had very good reasons for their objections. Therefore, I totally oppose any tax on an individual's labor. Our founders also saw a person's labor, not as profit of any kind, but as personal property, and even trade of time and labor, for a living. They saw this as a fundamental right, and I totally agree with that assessment. I totally oppose any tax on labor as unconstitutional, and I will continue to research this issue extensively, until I am satisfied that I have documentation that no one can dispute. *sm*