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Bill: Fair Taxation
Details
Submitted by[?]: Tuesday Is Coming
Status[?]: passed
Votes: This bill proposes to change income taxes. It requires more than half of the legislature to vote yes. This bill will pass as soon as the required yes votes are in, or will be defeated if unsufficient votes are reached on the deadline.
Voting deadline: February 2114
Description[?]:
| The Tuesday Is Coming proposes to adjust the government's income tax policy to more fairly tax each citizen. The tax rates will be adjusted again after this bill, for now the point is to establish a fair taxation system through a flat tax. A minor surplus is maintained to slow inflation and to avoid a deficit possibility. |
Proposals
Article 1
We propose to alter income tax brackets to the following setup. Information about the current income tax system can be found here.
| Bracket | Tax | Estimated Revenue |
| > 1 LOD | 17% | 49,090,000,000 LOD | Total | 49,090,000,000 LOD |
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 18:51:10, September 19, 2005 CET | From | Cooperative Commonwealth Federation | To | Debating the Fair Taxation |
| Message | tax the millionaire the same as his cleaning lady! |
| Date | 18:52:21, September 19, 2005 CET | From |  Tuesday Is Coming | To | Debating the Fair Taxation |
| Message | 17% of one million is much greater than 17% of something smaller |
| Date | 22:18:49, September 19, 2005 CET | From | CNT/AFL | To | Debating the Fair Taxation |
| Message | 17% of $2000 is far more valuable to a cleaning lady than 17% of $1,000,000 to a millionaire. |
| Date | 23:26:36, September 19, 2005 CET | From | Cooperative Commonwealth Federation | To | Debating the Fair Taxation |
| Message | ((it's a quote from Gerhard Schroeder in this week's German elections, by the way, when the proposal of a 25% flat tax may have cost the CDU an easy election win)) |
| Date | 03:09:30, September 20, 2005 CET | From | Tuesday Is Coming | To | Debating the Fair Taxation |
| Message | The fairest form of tax is where each citizen pays based on how much they benefit from the government, which would be regressive. I am proposing a flat tax, where all programs are sufficiently financed but no one recieves anything for nothing. A progressive income tax is notorious for its ability to target certain portions of the population which don't vote for those who design it. It is corrupt and unfair, and the closest that TiC will ever come to it is excise taxes on luxuries. |
| Date | 03:11:09, September 20, 2005 CET | From | Tuesday Is Coming | To | Debating the Fair Taxation |
| Message | "17% of $2000 is far more valuable to a cleaning lady than 17% of $1,000,000 to a millionaire" If the CNT/AFL is suggesting that our citizens know how to spend their own money better than we do, we most definitely agree. We hope this means they will support us in our efforts to cut government spending. |
| Date | 14:50:12, September 20, 2005 CET | From | Royal Conservative Party | To | Debating the Fair Taxation |
| Message | ((8-page discussion of flat tax from the Adam Smith Institute (very readable, even for a non-economist like me) http://www.adamsmith.org/pdf/flattaxuk.pdf Other ASI articles on the flat tax http://www.adamsmith.org/thinkpiece/001388.php http://www.adamsmith.org/thinkpiece/001465.php Critical commentary in the Guardian http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1563383,00.html Rebuttal of the Guardian's comments from ASI http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/archives/cat_tax_economy.php)) Commentary on the flat tax in the UK. The report of the Adam Smith Institute is particularly interesting.)) The ease and simplicity of the flat tax are highly advantageous to good government and therefore we support. |
| Date | 18:30:42, September 20, 2005 CET | From | Cooperative Commonwealth Federation | To | Debating the Fair Taxation |
| Message | ((German voters, by the way, rejeected the flat tax as a radical neo-liberal tactic. It was rejected most strongly by the traditionalist conservatives of the Christian Social Union, who rightly pointed out its devestating effect on the social fabric prized by true conservatives.)) |
| Date | 18:47:31, September 20, 2005 CET | From | Cooperative Commonwealth Federation | To | Debating the Fair Taxation |
| Message | by the way, the Adam Smith Institute is a terrible distortion of many of the ideas of Adam Smith (TIC may be interested in this link: http://www.pcdf.org/corprule/betrayal.htm). Just a few random thoughts: Smith: "[As Henry Home (Lord Kames) has written, a goal of taxation should be to] 'remedy inequality of riches as much as possible, by relieving the poor and burdening the rich.'" Smith again: "Every tax...is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery, but of liberty. It denotes that he is subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master." Senator Richard Lugar, US flat tax exponent, says explicitly the flat tax does not meet the criteria of what he calls "so-called fairness." It has different goals entirely. "Fair" is a misnomer. If the largest item of budget spending is military and police, which it generally is (especially in a govt slashing social spending, such as Lodamun now has), and if (as Adam Smith says) the main function of government is to defend property, then the rich in fact are the main beneficiaries of govt spending. As Tim Lai from the Adam Smith Institute writes: "A single rate that, on its own, leaves income tax receipts broadly unchanged (around 18.5 per cent) will disadvantage all but the upper quartile." Are there to be measures built in to protect the poor? Say someone earns 10% below the poverty line. Do they have to pay 17% of their income, already barely enough to ward off starvation, as tax? Or can there be a minimum income below which the govt does not tax people? |
| Date | 19:08:43, September 20, 2005 CET | From | Tuesday Is Coming | To | Debating the Fair Taxation |
| Message | The government currently proposes not to tax the first dollar of income. In the future, we will reduce taxation as spending is reduced, but we feel that any tax that isnt highly progressive and punitive is likely to be opposed by certain parties, therefore there is no rational for any corruption in the tax system. |
| Date | 19:19:51, September 20, 2005 CET | From | Cooperative Commonwealth Federation | To | Debating the Fair Taxation |
| Message | corruption? What do you mean? |
| Date | 19:23:08, September 20, 2005 CET | From | Tuesday Is Coming | To | Debating the Fair Taxation |
| Message | Benefitting some citizens at the expense of others for political gain... Such is the basis of an unbalanced taxation system |
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Voting
| Vote | Seats | |||
| yes |
Total Seats: 161 | |||
| no |
Total Seats: 86 | |||
| abstain | Total Seats: 53 |
| Random fact: There is a phpBB forum dedicated to Particracy. Please click the Forum link in the top game menu. Additions to the game, suggestions and discussion is held there so get involved. http://forum.particracy.net/ |
| Random quote: "This administration is not sympathetic to corporations; it is indentured to corporations." - Ralph Nader |