[extropy-chat] Income Tax

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Adrian Tymes <wingcat at pacbell.net> wrote:

> --- The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >      IMHO, I believe that the IRS should be abolsihed
> 
> Someone's got to tally the sales taxes, even under your new proposal.

Sales taxes are the most regressive, to start with, so they punish the
poor the most. Secondly, the IRS is only ONE tax collecting agency.
There are others. The ATF, for instance. Customs, for another. What I
believe Stuart is implying is something like what Reagan did with the
PATCO flight controllers union: fire all the IRS agents and never let
them work in taxes ever again, get rid of the tax code. Burn it.

The least onerous tax is the property tax. Problems with it is that 40%
of the land in the US is in government hands, while another 20% is in
the hands of large corporations that pay low taxes on their property,
and non-profit land trusts that don't pay any taxes on their property.

The property tax is the sort of tax that was the original national tax
system in the US Constitution: every state was responsible for a
portion of the federal budget based on their land area. This punished
states with lots of land and few people to engage in economic activity,
so it encouraged development and growth.

If we went back to such a system, states would collect the national
property tax and turn it over to the federal government, thus no
federal IRS would be necessary. Furthermore, if wealthy were prevented
from hiding property in charitable trusts or getting 'current use' tax
exemptions with sham farms or other fakery (Such as Supreme Court
Justice Stephen Breyer, who pays property taxes on only $199k of
property value when his 167 acre range is valued at $640k, yet has
fenced off and posted his land, in violation of requirements that
current use land be open to public recreation such as hunting, fishing,
hiking, or snowmobiling) then they would have to put their capital in
economic activities that produced growth to avoid federal taxes.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com


		
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