Tax hikes - Yay or Nay?

[Admiral Yi]

Erroneous. Half of payroll tax is employer paid, half employee paid. Currently capped at first $110k.

I believe the the cap was lifted on the Medicare portion to finance half of Obamacare.

[lustindarkness]

Erroneous. Half of payroll tax is employer paid, half employee paid. Currently capped at first $110k.

I believe the the cap was lifted on the Medicare portion to finance half of Obamacare.

Medicare cap was lifted a long time ago, before Obama.

[Admiral Yi]

 

[merithyn]

If you eliminate payroll taxes, how are taxes paid?

"Payroll taxes" are FICA and FUTA, SS and Medicare taxes.  As distinct from income tax.

Yeah, as soon as I sent that I realized that I'd mixed them up. But I was making more ginger ale and decided that I didn't care enough to go back to the computer to correct it.

[dps]

Ideally, I'd like to see a simplified personal income tax structure set up where everyone has a $50,000 personal exemption and that's it--no other deductions, exemptions, or credits.  Then tax everything over that $50,000 limit at a flat rate of about 33% (except build in a little bit of progressetivity at the low end so f.e. a guy making $500 over the limit isn't worse off than a guy $500 under the limit).  I think that even with that generous exemption, the elimination of other write-offs would actually lead to the feds taking in more in personal income tax revenue than the do now--if not, that 33% is negotiable. 

Of course, there won't be any negotiation about the rate, because that plan doesn't have a snowball's chance of getting enacted.

[MadImmortalMan]

Lots of you guys seem to be able to come up with way better ideas than 99% of Congress ever does. Funny, that.

[DGuller]

Lots of you guys seem to be able to come up with way better ideas than 99% of Congress ever does. Funny, that.

To be fair, we don't have to concern ourselves with what can satisfy enough of the powerful interests, as well as an intractable group of anarchist saboteurs.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I support a Buffett-style approach.

Keep everything else the same, but tax all income at the marginal tax rates and not some special rate for every dollar over $1m. Additionally there should be another tax bracket that starts at $1m and is a higher amount, and another that starts at $10m and would be around 45%-50%. I also believe tax-exempt municipal bonds are actually bad as a public policy tool and should be phased out.

Finally, I'd also say that any individual with under $250,000 in income or any household under $400,000 or so, pays 0% tax on capital gains/dividends. Anyone who isn't actually rich generates only a paltry amount of capital gains/dividend income, and we should let people in the upper middle class and down invest/save without having to deal with the tax hassle. Especially since we're often talking about a couple hundred bucks a year in dividends/cap gains.