James Pethokoukis of the publication US News and World Report has gotten wind of what Fred Thompson’s economic plan might look like (they’re calling it “Thompsonomics”) and I’ve got to say that Four out of Five ain’t bad.
A 19 percent flat tax on all earned income including capital gains.
Increasing the personal exemption and expanding the child-care credits.
Indexing all capital gains and interest income for inflation.
Taxing corporate cash flow rather than profits and allowing the immediate expensing of all business investment.
Limiting the deduction for mortgage interest.
What say ye?
Make it 15%, and give EVERY person filing on the form an exemption equal to whatever the ‘poverty level’ income is for a single person.
Which means that a family of 4 would pretty much be exempt from taxation on the first $50k or so.
Oh yeah, and eliminate withholding. Move Tax Day to the first Monday in November. We all remember what happens on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, right?
Nope.
Fair tax.
http://www.fairtax.org
Sorry DJ, but you can take that FairTax crap elsewhere.
I’ve never seen so many libertarians (small l and big L) get fooled into believing in such a socialism based piece of shit in my life.
Fuck the FairTax and whomever that radio jackass is who promotes it.
pretty much what HL said, but I’d also keep the mortgage interest deduction.
ALSO – there should be an amnesty for people with judgements and leins – give them an incentive to get back into the system. Anything to keep people from dodging their taxes and get more back into the system.
Screw the “expanding the child-care credits”. Why should people get tax breaks for having kids? I’ve never understood that one.
Dicking with the home mortgage interest deduction will cause the biggest recession we’ve had since the 1930’s.
It shows that Freddie-boy is more interested in Federal revenue enhancement than promoting business. Why does he want to kill off the biggest commercial industry in the nation?
All messing with the mortage interest deduction is, is a tax hike. Let’s call a spade a spade here.
The big reason I left out the mortgage interest deduction is that it lets the camel get his nose into the tent. One of the biggest problems with the current system is all the various special interest bennies that have been inserted.
And yes, mortgage interest deductions are a special interest benny. Anything that treats one group of people differently than another is a special interest item.
According to , the 2007 poverty level for the Lower 48 is $10,210. So a family of 4 would be tax-exempt up to $40,840. At that point, they don’t need child-care credits.
Another thing I would add: all forms of employer-provided compensation, including healthcare, counts as income. Personally, I think this would go a hell of a long way toward injecting market economics into healthcare, and greatly improve that situation.
The only problem with what I’m proposing is it would never pass, because it gives the statist, class-warfare scaremongers too much to scare folks with.
Oh, and I ran the numbers, and for me, personally, my proposal would come out pretty close to revenue-neutral, possibly actually a slightly bigger tax bill once I include the value of my Army-provided healthcare.
So maybe reduce the rate to 10%. 😉
Fuck, my HTML didn’t work. There was supposed to be a link the the HHS povertly level table in there.
And, to counter the point Rivrdog made while I was posting-I think if you expand the personal exemption, you can eliminate the mortage interest deduction.
As I said, I ran the numbers, at least roughly, and with a 15% flat tax rate, with a $10k per person exemption for my family of 4, it reduced my tax bite by about $275.
That said, I really can’t say what it would do to the mortgage industry at large. I’ll grant you that the short-term effect proably wouldn’t be fun.
However, long run, it would remove the distortion in the market caused by the mortgage-interest deduction, and make it so that consumers are buying and selling houses for the right personal and economic reasons, without haveing to consider the tax ramifications.
Phil, I’ll bite, where’s the socialist influence on what amounts to a national sales tax?
I usually agree with folks around here, and if there’s a real problem with the Fair Tax, I’d like to hear the argument.
Personally, I’d favor a consumption tax over an income tax because that prevents the .gov from needing to know what I made, and pulls “under the table” money “above the table”.
A National Sales Tax has no socialist influence, Jet.
Unfortunately for what folks have been told, the so called “FairTax” is not a National Sales Tax. Anyone who tells you that the “FairTax” is a National Sales Tax either doesn’t know a damn thing about it or is lying to you.
Go ahead, follow DJ’s link and read about all the class warfare exemptions, how you have to deal with the feds every month instead of once a year, how all businesses/incorporations/sole partnerships/LLC’s have to pass muster of a newly created governmental body in order to get/keep their sales tax exemptions, etc.
Hell, the first clue is the name of the idiotic thing.
“Fair” at the beginning of any goverment program = Socialist bullshit.
Sorry if sounded all confrontational there, Jet, but this dumbass idea just gets me riled.
Actually, now that I’m home and have found it, I’ll update and repost what I wrote about about the “FairTax” last year.