We are told by the experts that tax reform will be complicated because we can't even figure how to use the tax base in order to garnish income. What is a tax base and how is it created? Quite simply, a tax base is comprised of three areas: spending, saving, and investing (capital gains). The problem in America is that we are required to pay over twenty percent in taxes on our net worth which is easy to fudge if you have enough earnings, but difficult to pay if you don't. What would a Fortune 500 company have to pay if they paid 20 percent? They must have at least a billion dollars to qualify for this. Twenty percent of a billion is...two hundred million dollars. Consider that there are no less than 400 companies who fall into this category in America. How much revenue would that be? That would be eighty billion dollars!--annually! Of course, the corporations would never allow that so why do we, the mid level and low level income earners, allow that?
ALEC and Heritage House tell us we need economic freedom but with rates like that and higher, how can we have the kind of freedom they speak of, the freedom to have a decent retirement that we pay for, medical care that we pay for, livelihood that we pay for? Why are those doing business, selling goods to us, why aren't they held accountable for the same rate of taxation? They make enough to hide it, getting far more deductions and taking advantage of many more loopholes we aren't able to because we don't have the financial freedom to do so. Look, how many of us have extra cash to stash in offshore banks tax free???
Taxation should do two things, encourage business to provide jobs here in America and to secure the economic well being of our country. The fear is that if we tax companies too highly, they will do business elsewhere--they already do. We are told to relax that our American companies overseas hire Americans but they hire executive level Americans as a rule and hire locals to that country for the jobs we once held here. Another trick of our government is that those Americans working and living overseas pay taxes in the countries they live but are also forced to pay taxes at a higher rate than we do to our country. Jamaica, the Phillipines and the United States are the only countries who do this, but that is another matter of unfair taxation practices I don't wish to address at this time.
I propose:
1) 80% of consumer goods sold to Americans should be manufactured here in America by companies employing Americans. These companies should be accountable for a 1% tax rate on quarterly audited gross receipts. I did say gross, not net.
2) No more than 20% of goods sold to us should be imported ,and what an import is,needs to be redefined. Companies who don't have brokering, packaging, and shipping plants, headquarters, are to be considered foreign companies and they should pay a high tax to sell goods to us, prior to selling it to us (20% import fee). In cases of brokering such as coffee and bananas which would be exempt from import fees, those who have headquarters here in America, or have assembly and shipping centers here, they should be taxed 1% on all gross earnings.
3) Interstate commerce taxation needs to be done away with.
4)States need to garnish taxes too, a flat rate of 1/4% on all gross earnings. States will also garnish a flat rate of property taxes on business and housing.
5) Sales taxes will go to cities and counties accordingly with no more than 5 percent on goods sold but not on services.
6) Companies should have recycling facilities including saline plants to reuse contaminated water in the case of alluminum and steel facilities, etc. Plus sediment sites need to be set up as well. If the states want the business they should look into footing some of the bill in order to keep their states green. It can be done, it won't be cheap, but it must be done to get our jobs back here in America.
By imposing a flat tax on everyone from major corporation to the little guy we will level the field of responsibility. It will simplify taxes in that there will be no deductions allowed (except in the case of wages and if that is the case, we must make sure that at least 80% of all employees are granted full time status). People would be responsible for their own benefits packages unless the companies want to compete for qualified people by offering benefits as a perk to come work for them, but they should not be deductable for the company who does this, only the wages paid. We have become far too dependent on the state and federal government for subsidizing our health care and social security. This is partly due to the loss of jobs in America and the expense to own a small business which has difficulty competing for goods at a reasonable cost when corporations import those goods back to us at such a cheap cost.
In order to handle the taxation problems we must have jobs available that provide us a living wage, not a minimum wage and since corporations today have slithered off to other lands and avoided paying a fair share of taxes, it is time to make them pay for selling back to us. I'd just as soon they leave us indefinately so we can claim the facilites and reopen them to employ our own workers. We are smart, we can make our industries more environmentally friendly. The middle class American and the Small business owners shouldn't have to foot the bill and if this continues, other countries will own our debts. Oh, yeah, they already do. If we begin soon, and impose the flat tax on gross earnings, our country will be out of its several trillion dollars debt in under four years.
I say, before we try to help the others, lets heal our own sickness. We shouldn't try to do it simultaneously or we will all lose out.
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