A good first step would be to force churches and charitable organizations to segregate their charitable activities from their sanctuary building activities. If the money isn't being spent on actual charities (Note: not temples, new buildings, and overhead) then it can remain tax free.
I'm not sure we come close to balancing the budget at 15%. Any discussion about tax rates has to be about spending too.
I agree I guess. Except the infrastructure is wearing out and we're not currently keeping up with the engineers' suggested replacement schedules at the current rates.
Figure out what is fair to take from the populace. Make that consistently applied to each person. Then prioritize expenses and make it fit within the budget. Pretty simple concepts.
Extremely simple concepts, but also extremely difficult to agree on the answers about what is fair and what is priority. And the answers are what economists and politicians have been fighting about for the last 50+ years.
IMO, the tax rate and spending should be set to maximize long run economic growth. But the question about what that looks like has not been definitively answered. You need a healthy well-educated population and enough income equality to keep the velocity of money high. You need to be safe. You need infrastructure that supports commerce. But you also need incentives for people to start businesses and pursue wealth to create jobs. All those things are important and maximizing simultaneously is tough.
If you're talking just a flat 15% effective rate I don't believe that would change total federal tax revenues all that much.
The federal government is horrible at maintaining infrastructure since keeping up a bridge or road isn't sexy and win votes with photo opportunities. Education should be ran at the state levels. Always trying to keep up with the bullshit from Washington on education is a huge waste of resources and hurts the quality of education in this country.
I don't think it's that hard. I think the priority is what do we spend the money on that gets us reelected.
Thought Texas had more say in education, than anyone else. "Keep Mississippi dumb, Support State ran Education." Catchy.
Texas and California because of text books but there's never any constancy in goals or expectations. This leads to huge wastes in buying classroom materials, text books and in professional training.
I skipped a step, I suppose. I thought IP was going to limit my ability to deduct my contributions to those orgs. I don't think you'd have any problem making them unprofitable. That's an accounting issue more than anything.
No it isn't, but I did not state my point very well. Most people would fall into the 25-35% brackets, or 40k-400k, for ordinary income before exemptions and deductions. Was really interested to know what nominal and effective brackets should be, in the opinion of the 8th. I appreciate your <20% answer, although this is a pretty big increase on 80% of income earners.
My point is for ip that I don't think it would move the needle tax wise. Unless they start taxing endowments or something
