17% flat tax on your income is 17%! There is no going around it b/c there are no deductions or shady loop holes!

Sorry, Sam, but you still don’t understand what a flat tax is and what it isn’t. I fully agree with you that the most difficult and problematic thing about taxes is all the shady loopholes and deductions. But that has nothing to do with a flat tax!

You could eliminate all those things from the progressive tax system. Or you could still have them in a flat tax. I conceptually agree with seeing them eliminated just like you, but it is *not* the same thing as a flat tax. It a separate concept.

(Btw, practically, eliminating deductions would have serious secondary implications. The biggest one I can think of is it would probably knock 10-25% off the value of people’s homes overnight. Because you’d lose all the tax breaks. Great for home buyers going forward, awful for anyone who already owns a home.)

Do it in a revenue neutral way that doesn’t punish the people who need it most, and I’d be fine with it.

The upper tax bracket was 40% in the 90s and the economy was roaring. The 35% reduction was always planned to be temporary. You can throw up fear all you want, but reality has already proven that a 40% rate doesn’t impede the economy. I know its inconvenient when reality doesn’t match your ideology, but it’s already occurred.

“Of course I’ve had to pay every single tax bracket.”

Forgive me, but I have to wonder about your wording here. I don’t know you from Adam, so let me dig a bit deeper. Trust, but verify. “Paying every single tax bracket” could simply mean that you’re in the top bracket, and therefore each year a portion of your income is in each. If that’s the case, it was not the question that was asked.

The question that was asked was have you actually *been* *in* each tax bracket. More precisely defined to mean that you’ve worked full time (not part time as a student or anything, not when you were living with your parents and didn’t have to pay expenses… not a time you started your first job late in the year and so only got to a certain level) and your full income for the full year brought you up only to the level of each marginal tax bracket.

Was there a time when you worked full time and made less than the ~$17K married/$8.5K single of taxable income required to be in the 10% bracket? Etc

Lets make sure we’re all being fully disclosing here.

“If you want me to perform open heart surgery on you, even though I know nothing about heart surgery, let me know.”

Of course not, and by your standards, since you haven’t worked in all aspects of the medical profession, I suppose that means that your opinion has no credibility when it comes to healthcare policy either, right?

If you want me to perform open heart surgery on you, even though I know nothing about heart surgery, let me know.

@ Edwin
You’re right, I don’t have any credibility when it comes to determining prison sentences, b/c I have neither gone to prison, nor studied criminal law. Well done.

Yeah, lets take this to its logical conclusion. Unless you’ve been in prison you have no dredibility in crime policy. Unless you’ve been homeless you have no credibility in social programs. Unless you’ve been a single parent trying to feed 2 kids on minimum wage, you have no credibility in food stamp policy. Unless you’ve been a four star general, you have no credibility in foreign policy.

Yeah, lets let everyone have exclusive say in the areas that most impact their special interests. That’d be a great way to run it.