Shannyn Griffin. Professor Jones. English 1102, Section

The current tax policy in the United States is very confusing and it is very costly for our government to administer it. It is in the best interest of our country and its citizens to revise or replace our current tax policy.

The Fair Tax is not a tax break. It ensures revenue neutrality meaning that the FairTax will give the government the same amount of revenue as the income tax system while spurring economic growth. The critics of the FairTax say that the rate should be at least 10% higher in order for the government to have revenue neutrality. With the substantially higher sales tax rate people may evade this tax and just buy the necessities. A vast majority of poor people are all in debt because they spend even when they don’t have money, when people have more money they save anyway. This fact leads critics to believe that since the poor and middle class spend the most they will be bear the burden of the substantially higher sales tax. FairTax answers this criticism by saying that the government will fully reimburse taxes for those whose income is below poverty level. The “prebate” discussed earlier and the elimination of FICA taxes

Throughout the entire existence of any form of government, there has always been taxes. Most of the time (if not all), people hate taxes. With this being said, the United States has adopted a progressive tax since its very existence. We believe that if our nation is placed under a flat tax system, our economy will operate more effectively. If we incorporate a flat tax system we will be able to ensure fairness among all citizens, eliminate tax loopholes, and allow opportunities for business expansion. With this being said, we will be examining the strengths and weaknesses about the flat tax system and how it has been used into practice.

Another idea would be to avoid increasing the tax rates as this will help “minimize economic distortions that shrink the level of production” (Baker III, 2009, p. 1). To promote economic growth, our team recommends that we take the approach of increasing the corporate tax base and decreasing the corporate tax rates. Other suggestion is to reduce the deductibility of state and local taxes. Other reforms that could be looked

People do not enjoy talking about taxes because they are too political, confusing, and depressing. It is no secret that the American tax code is a mess and something many economists describe as too broken to fix. Despite this, politicians have never stopped from trying to “fix” the code, yet they have had very little success. The U.S. Government’s tax code currently comprises “more than 67,000 pages of complexities” (Boortz, Linder, & Woodall 14). The Americans for Fair Taxation (AFFT) was founded in 1995 with one goal: create the simplest and best tax reform plan that would work in the modern market and economy. The AFFT’s best solution was a bill which they promptly called the FairTax.

The federal tax code has a level of complexity so great, that reforming it should be the one thing Republicans and Democrats can agree on. Instead, proposal after proposal calling for reform die in Congress. And there have been a lot of proposals. Arlen Specter (D-PA) put some form of a flat tax/tax reform proposal into Congress’s hands every year from 1995-2010. This is because, for the most part, the fight for reform always comes down to a two sided debate. One side wants to keep the current complex structure and the other sees no other alternative than blowing this current structure up and moving to a flat rate system. All of this brings me to the arguments for/against the flat rate tax system.

The tax policy in the United States is very confusing. When the tax policy was originally written in 1913 it was four hundred pages. Now, over the past ninety one years, that tax policy has evolved to over 72,000 pages. Since the tax code has become so lengthy and nearly impossible to understand, the topic of tax reform has been in the minds of many. Although, most barely think about tax reform until tax season. It is a controversial subject due to the impact a change in tax code would have on the American people. The two most popular and widely known stakeholders in this debate are the two major political parties in the United States, the Democrats and the Republicans. The two parties share absolutely no common ground on the subject of

After the passage of the 16th Amendment, the nature and process of taxation changed many times. An author for the Virginia Law Review wrote in 1972, “Developing and maintaining an appropriate tax structure for a nation as economically complex and dynamic as the United States is a mammoth task” (Graetz, p. 1401). Because of this complexity, the nature of the Tax Code would need to be altered to keep up with what the country requires at a given time. Several significant changes have been made to the Tax Code, but none more significant than the passage of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA 86). TRA 86 was one of the most polarizing changes in tax law and where the current Code gets its name (Spilker et all., 2016, p. 2-11). It brought about more revisions than most people and businesses could keep up with, and it brought to light the deficiencies in implementing amendments to the Code, namely a disturbing lack of awareness from taxpayers of the alterations. Many businesses benefited from the changes—mostly large, well-established firms, but small mom-and-pop stores who have less stake in tax planning suffered (Scholes, Wilson, Wolfson, 1992, p.181). This negative effect would have been avoided if taxpayers had taken precautions and been aware of the impending changes in tax laws and if those changes had been communicated clearly to them.

The current tax legislation that needs reform are the tax rates for families, individuals, businesses, and investors. America needs tax reform because the current tax code prevents economic freedom and reduces the strength of the economy. The current tax base causes double taxation of investment and savings, which discourages the amount of investment in the society. Less investment reduces productivity growth, employment, and real wages. We need a constitutional tax reform that is followed by everyone to relieve the harm of the current tax system and to strengthen our economy. The reform is necessary because the strengthened economic growth would essentially improve the incomes of Americans and enhance economic opportunities.

The governments in any country use various taxation systems to raise funds to fund its national projects. The most common tax system is the income tax whereby the government raises funds from individual’s earnings. However, in the past few years, there has been heated debate about the adverse effects of progressive income tax on productivity and a proposal to replace it with national sales tax (Hodge, 2017). The national sales tax also known as the fair tax is intended to replace the current income tax and the idea is to enable the government to generate income from consumptions as opposed to earnings. This document examines the positives and negatives of the proposed national sales tax on the U.S. economy. The suggestion to impose a tax on consumption rather than consumption aims at encouraging savings and investments to improve productivity and promote economic growth. It is expected to promote fairness in the taxation because individuals will pay according to what they consume and not what they earn.

The Armey-Shelby flat tax proposal will scraps the entire income tax code and replaces it with a flat-rate income tax that treats all Americans the same. This plan would simplify the tax code, promote economic opportunity, and restore fairness and integrity to the tax system. The flat rate would be phased-in over a three-year period, with a 19 percent rate for the first two years and a 17 percent rate for subsequent years.

"A revolutionary change in our tax system is fundamental to re-energizing the American economy and restoring the American dream" (Moore 1). Currently, there are two major plans being considered to try and fix the tax system in the United States. These two plans are the Flat Tax and the National Retail Sales Tax. "Both the Flat Tax and a National Sales Tax would replace today's discriminatory tax structure with a single low rate. Either plan would promote the kind of capital formation that America needs to boost workers' incomes and raise long-term economic growth" (Mitchell 1). This means that the flat tax would take away the savings from the government and pass them on to the citizens and businesses. By doing this, there would be a rise in long-term economic growth.

Throughout history, taxation on United States citizens has proven to be a necessary component of a growing economy as means of generating revenue for the federal budget. The federal budget funds the many government programs implemented to keep the disabled, elderly, and unemployed from falling bellow the poverty level. Unfortunately, this fund is not always available when catastrophic evens, such as an economic recession, deplete the revenue coming in and create a budget deficit. In order to regenerate money coming in and replace the deficit, the government calls on money gained from taxes. What happens when tax money is already appropriated to other programs? A tax reform. A tax increase has many times been the

We have all heard the famous quote by Benjamin Franklin who stated, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” (“Benjamin Franklin Quotes”) We find this to be true as we begin working and feel the pain of money being taken from our paychecks. Then we face the chore of having to file income taxes yearly. Although there are many taxes we are subject to, most people are referring to federal income tax when they complain about taxes. There has been debate for decades about the current system but there has been no agreement on how to fix it. The United States currently has a progressive tax code which means people pay taxes according to their earnings. This has been in place since the time of Abraham Lincoln. An alternative

Policy makers have introduced a solution to the staggering proportion of taxes that Americans spend. The flat tax, based on an idea developed by Professors Robert Hall and Alvin Rabushka of Stanford University to create a fair, simple, and pro-growth tax system (Mitchell 1, 11). There are four basic criteria that make up a flat tax. First is a single low rate on taxable income, the baseline for taxable income would be raised to a certain amount dictated by a personal exemption. Second is simplicity, all Americans would fill out the same postcard-sized form to pay their taxes. Third is the reduction or elimination of deductions, credits, and exemptions, depending