Didn't realize that Buffett's secretary

[lawgator1]

No to the sliding scale. imo, that takes away the "fairness" aspect and provides incentives for the most successful to be the most creative in hiding their income. Make it flat, same percentage for everyone. The churches are generally happy with 10%, so the government should be also.

Oh, and lets get rid of payroll deductions. Make everyone write a check once a year. If we did that now, without changing anything else in the code, we'd have a wholesale revolt.

1) If its a flat tax -- even though tiered -- and there are no deductions or exemptions, there is no means to "hide" anything (other than of course illegal laundering or cash type stuff and that's always a problem.)

2) A tiered system makes sense if for no other reason than that our economy and taxation has for a long time been progressive. Nuking that all at once seems impossible to me.

You could view it this way: Something like what I suggest might be stepping stone to totally flat tax of one rate sometime down the road.

 

[volinbham]

this article indicates her income is more like $60K. If so, there is some funny math going on to say she pays 35.8 and he pays 17.4%. The top marginal rate for her would be 25 and that only applies to the last 25K of her income (total income) - when you figure in a standard deduction and exemption her AGI at the max would be around 50K of which the first 35K+ is taxed at 10% / 15%.

If they want to use this example, we should see the numbers.

How Rich is Warren Buffett's Secretary? - Megan McArdle - Business - The Atlantic