I couldn’t decide what to call this, so I doubled down with two titles: “Make Taxation Theft Again” or “How to Fix Taxation.”
You’ve seen the hats that look like MAGA but say, “Make Taxation Theft Again!” Right? Pretty clever.
Taxing income is taxing labor. Taxing labor is equivalent to serfdom.
We all work in the fields of the USA and the “lords” (government) take the fruits of our labors and allow us to keep some of what we earned. That has to stop.
A “progressive” income tax is bad business. You’re taxing people for learning better skills and doing better at their jobs, which makes the world a better place. Stupid.
Make Taxation Theft Again!
Should the poor be taxed? Not at all.
Should the working class? Nope.
Middle class? Not on my watch.
Rich? Not through their labor, but through other means, yes.
If you’re in the US, you’re in the top 15% of the world in terms of livelihood.*
Let’s take a moment to think about how fortunate we are.
Ok, great. Now let’s try to make life even better in the US. I started with a plan for a Universal Basic Income.
You caught me. I’m a libertarian with a heart.
How much tax revenue does the individual income tax actually generate? 47% of $3.2T according to this site.
That’s $1.5 Trillion in revenue.
But that’s a heavy burden for laborers to bear. And with more and more jobs disappearing, that system won’t withstand the future of automation and robots (neither pay taxes). So who should bear this responsibility?
Let’s make corporations pay.
It’s time we stop giving corporate welfare and take care of our people instead.
The Fortune 500 companies had $12 Trillion in revenue in 2016.
Based on my fast-and-loose estimations, the next 500 largest companies make $1.5 Trillion (shows the huge drop-off from the top of the top).
Wall Street has screwed America in many ways, it’s time to give back. There are 2800 companies on the NYSE. The next 1800 after the top 1000 should be able to have revenue of $1.5T.
My point of all that is:
a flat 10% tax on revenue placed on corporations listed on the NYSE would replace the entire revenue from individual income taxes.
Worst-case scenario: corporations increase the price of goods 10% to keep profits the same.
But there would quickly be more competition from startups to undercut prices and steal business (because a small private company wouldn’t be hit by that tax) from the giant corporations. This would drive the costs back down fairly quickly.
Besides, all workers get a 15-28% raise (depending on your tax bracket), so you cover the 10% price hike and still get a raise!
Let’s say you make $50,000/yr. Your taxes are roughly $8k (ballparking here). And you spend too many hours and too many dollars on filing taxes. What a waste. With this plan, you get an $8000 raise. And a few extra hours of Netflix. You’re welcome.
With a UBI in place, people wouldn’t need to worry.
We’d remove the minimum wage with UBI implementation, so corporations could lower their prices on products.
Instead of fighting to make Wal-Mart pay a couple dollars more per hour to people who will lose their jobs to a screen in 5-7 yrs, just make Wal-Mart pay flat 10% tax on their revenue.
When everyone gets a UBI to ensure they stay above water (unless they blow it, but that’s their choice and they can deal with the consequences), you don’t need artificially contrived wage rate to “protect” you in the marketplace.
Don’t do work that won’t pay you what you want to be paid for the work – you’ll still have $1000/month to pay bills.
Repeal two laws (~80,000 page income tax code and minimum wage) and replace with one: 10% tax on revenue of corporations. Simple problem-solving.
Side Notes:
“But Johnny, you didn’t fix the other half of corporate taxation where they all lobby to not pay anything!”
You’re right. I’ll work on that next. Then, I’ll start fixing the corporate executive compensation, which might solve a few more problems too.