Lawnmowing and Taxes

[lorimt]

Once upon a time, I wrote college application essays. One of my favorites as far as actually being interesting rather than silly/trite was the one I wrote about tax reform. Once upon a more recent time, I used to talk politics among other things with Clara
Once upon earlier this morning, I mowed the lawn and thought thoughts.

What all this boils down to is that I'm still trying to figure out what a good, decent, legitimate and practical tax system would look like. (Note: those four adjectives are not redundant

For example: Is it legitimate to tax people under the age of 18? We fought under a rallying cry of "No taxation without representation" once. What does representation and such do to sales tax or income tax or other things that apply to youth? People have offered the following explanations or excuses for these issues, most people under age 18 get refunds each year as they don't fall into a tax bracket. Fine, what about those who do? Some students are in a tax bracket because of education funds in their name. Is it their money or their parents? If someone over 18 earned it, are taxes OK then? How do you guard against child tax shelters? What about people working full time to support themselves? Are they "legal adults?" Should they be able to vote?

What services do taxes pay for? Yes I know in general, but can I find a list somewhere? How does the money break down, percentage-wise? If I gave out points, there would be a few in here for people who could find me good unbiased data.

How many different taxes am I subject to? How about someone who lives in town X, county Y state Z? Is there a good way to figure out all the taxes someone pays without counting on one's hands? Again, data would be most appreciated.

What constitutes a fair tax system? What features must it have? How can such a system also be easily monitored/administered? Our current system works, but what would make it better?

I may try to figure out and post some of my opinions in the next few days, but I want to hear what other people have to say.

Comments

[jmpava.livejournal.com]

Actually, from personal experiance, at least some (if not all) education funds set up in a minors name by their family or others does not effect the minors taxes while:

a) The person in question is under 18 or 21 or something like that

and/or

b) The person is still listable (and listed!) as a dependant of the person who set up/maintains the fund.

Yeah, past that point they do have to pay taxes on it, but also past that point, if it actually is legaly in thier name, they now legally have full control of it and can take over or disolve it or whatnot (legaly. That doesn't include family politics which might make that a very bad idea :-> )

I'm not sure what you mean by "child tax shelters". Could you clarify?

As far as where the money is going... well, a WHOLE bunch is going to defense (such as SDI and crap like that). Remember how everyone was complaining about how medicare, etc... was bankrupting the government? At the time (and I would assume now), Medicare and the other programs raised (Head Start, Education funding, Socail Security) MIGHT have used up 2% of the federal budget (although I think less). Defense usually hovers around 50-60%. (Of course, that's the info the I look at. I'm sure some other people might look at different facts which press THIER agendas :-> )

I think a fair tax system would be ones that didn't provide gobs of breaks to the wealthiest 5% of the country. Did you know that thier was a maximum that you had to pay for social security each year? Sounds like a good idea right? Except the maximum is SOOOO high, that "normal working" people would never actually reach it in any given year, while the wealthy 5% stop paying thier share of social security tax for a year after the first month!

Additionally, the single major tax break (on an individual level, I'm not even going to go into corporate tax breaks here!) involves home equity. ALL interest on home morgtage payments count as tax deductions, and house equity is used against your income. Of course, this solely benifits those in the middle->upper classes who can actually afford to buy houses. lower and low-middle class persons who make LESS frequently end up paying much more in US income taxes since they can only rent houses or apartments which does NOT provide this giant tax shelter.

Locale does matter a lot, but kinda evens out. For example, WA has high sales tax, but no property tax. OR has no sales tax but rather high property tax. CA has both, plus State income tax! (Of course, the best situation is to live in Vancouver and shop in Portland :-> )

[lorimt]

If children don't have to pay taxes, their parents can shelter money by putting it in the child's name, then using it themselves. Appearently, education funds and suchlike have safeguards against this kind of thing, though I don't know exactly how it works.

[sithjawa.livejournal.com]

Recently I ran across a page that pointed out that DC doesn't have a representative and thus people in DC are subject to taxation without representation. Can't remember the page now, didn't pay too much attention being an ignorant west coaster and therefore knowing nothing about such issues, but I thought it's interesting if it's true.

[staticentropy.livejournal.com]

Right - DC doesn't have any voting members of the House nor the Senate. However, they do get a token "observer"...