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Talk:Flat tax
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Needs a section on Steve Forbes stupidity. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 17:53, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
How does this make sense?[edit]
"The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equality under the law and incorporates the Bill of Rights (i.e., applies them to the states). This is used to argue that a progressive tax does not constitute equality under the law. However, this ignores the fact that later amendments always supersede earlier ones, so the Sixteenth Amendment makes this argument irrelevant."
Um... yes, they do, but the Sixteenth Amendment says nothing about a progressive tax, only a tax. The argument is that a progressive tax doesn't constitute inequality under the law, but that fact has nothing to do with the Sixteenth Amendment. Sake Fueled (talk) 04:30, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
- The Sixteenth Amendment was made specifically because the Constitution had previously required that "direct taxes" be in equal proportions.
ListenerXTalkerX 05:43, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
- The Constitution previously hadn't allowed direct income taxes, flat or progressive. What the Constitution had said previously was that duties on goods had to be geographically uniform, and taxes on states proportionate. It has nothing to do with this argument. Sake Fueled (talk) 07:08, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
- That did not refer to taxes on the states themselves, but taxes on people within the states; income taxes were not prohibited as such, but they were effectively prohibited since income was not uniformly distributed. It is true that it is not directly relevant to the Fourteenth Amendment argument, but it underscores the point that "equal protection" can be construed in many different ways: it could mean that each person has to pay the same amount of tax (e.g., $100), that each person has to pay the same proportion of tax (a flat tax), that people making the same amount of money have to be charged the same amount of income tax (flat or progressive), etc., etc. ListenerXTalkerX 07:37, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
- That did not refer to taxes on the states themselves, but taxes on people within the states; income taxes were not prohibited as such, but they were effectively prohibited since income was not uniformly distributed. It is true that it is not directly relevant to the Fourteenth Amendment argument, but it underscores the point that "equal protection" can be construed in many different ways: it could mean that each person has to pay the same amount of tax (e.g., $100), that each person has to pay the same proportion of tax (a flat tax), that people making the same amount of money have to be charged the same amount of income tax (flat or progressive), etc., etc.
- The Constitution previously hadn't allowed direct income taxes, flat or progressive. What the Constitution had said previously was that duties on goods had to be geographically uniform, and taxes on states proportionate. It has nothing to do with this argument. Sake Fueled (talk) 07:08, 9 February 2012 (UTC)