Single-Payer Tax Plan

| Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Obama wants to raise taxes on the rich. This isn't going to work. The problem isn't with "taxing the job creators", but with the fact that the rich are extremely good at not paying taxes. They will evade them.

This is why I propose a simpler system: a "single payer system" The name is slightly misleading, as there may be multiple players, but the goal is to keep down the total number of payers.

Here's how it works:

All federal taxes are abolished, everything from tariffs to social security taxes. In their place is the single-payer system. Under this system, near the end of the fiscal year Congress adds up how much it has spent, plus 10% to account for them being terrible at math, and then seeks to get revenues to cover it.

The revenue-gathering process is a two-step process. First step, all people in the world with incomes greater than $1 million, or USD equivalent annually or assets greater than $50 million, with corporations counted as people, are placed into an ordered list. Second step, IRS agents go down the list, taking whatever they feel like, until the spending has been paid off. In some cases, a "one point five" step may be needed: auctioning off assets which are too hard to liquidate on current markets, such as houses, cars, and the rights to ghost-write the autobiographies of taxpayers.

The FBI and CIA would be removed from the Department of Homeland Security and placed under the control of the IRS, because we're going to need a lot of intel and covert-ops capability.

The income and asset thresholds would be linked to inflation, so they will slowly rise over time.

Take note of the many benefits over the current system.
- Impossible to evade: Even if you try to hide assets the IRS will just take them anyway.
- Simplifies taxes: You never need to fill out a federal tax form ever again.
- Ensures a balanced budget: Revenues automatically rise to meet spending.
- Removes the market-distorting effects of variable taxation: capital gains, salaries, wages, and side benefits can all be confiscated equally.
- Finally validates Ron Paul's desk sign: "Don't steal, the IRS hates competition."
- Is unlikely to take my money, or yours, or that of anyone you know.
- High likelihood of taking more money from foreigner citizens than from Americans, which is like taking money from people who don't know, but even more patriotic.

Due to no longer being "internal" to the United States, the IRS would be renamed the Revenue Service.

The only possible downsides come from the Foreign Revenue Service division, which might violate international law, but with an automatically balancing budget, we will be able to afford whatever military expenditures are needed to fix this problem.

P.S. Yes, this is a repost.

9 comments:

Feliz said...

Reminds me of the tax collection methods as seen in the latest Robin Hood movie with Russel Crowe and Cate Blanchett.

Umrtvovacz said...

First, I see no reason why should world pay for USA government spending. USA is in a poor economic state not because world doesn't pay enough money to USA, but because America have masses of undereducated people and terrible greed-based corporatocracy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy). Second, this idea is so communist it even slightly offends me (I am from post-socialistic country and it's people with ideas like yours who brought upon us decades of stagnation and poverty).

I am amazed. Obama is the most socialist/leftist president united states had in a long time. His Health Care and progressive tax is all I though is USA able to take, but no, there is always some socialist/leftist who complains. Mind you, there is nothing wrong with leftist or socialist ideas, what I don't like is nonsensical communist bollocks, something that can't be applied to real world, and if it could it would hurt world economy more than any crisis ever could. Even though I like your blog and read it for several years, I must tell you that IMHO posting this was bad idea in the first place. Reposting it? Eh...

Klepsacovic said...

Obama is hardly an extreme leftist. The health insurance mandate was a conservative idea to bring in personal responsibility, an alternative to a really socialist idea like a single-payer system, which this title is a pun on. Progressive taxation is older than Obama. If you're referring to the Buffett Rule, that's an attempt to correct a regressive tax system.

I can't imagine how anyone would take this post as a serious suggestion. Surely the concept of the CIA being merged into the IRS to steal foreign money was sufficiently absurd...

MomentEye said...

Plan needs a flag.
Something black and white so it reproduces on faxes.

Maybe with two bare bones to illustrate the stripped down nature of the plan.
And a skull to show that it protects the brain. Yeah.

Umrtvovacz said...

Yeah, my granddad was also thinking "Nobody would take those silly ideas seriously let alone implement them." And boom, here comes the socialism. Nothing to joke about.

Tesh said...

Even a decade ago I'd not have thought we'd see an American president appointing "czars". The definition of "absurd" slides around a bit.

Klepsacovic said...

@MomentEye: Good idea.

@Umrtvoacz: He wasn't reading ideas posted with the intention of being silly. You are not your grandfather and you're not living in his times.

@Tesh: Media-appointed names are terrifying. I'd love to see a time in history when Presidents were not appointing people to carry out policy goals.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

@Tesh
The first Czar was appointed by Ronald Reagan.

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