Taxation With Representation

copa

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Federal, state and local income or sales taxes, if paid by individuals not corporations, should be directly allocated when they are paid. The burden of taxation should be redirected to corporations and lifted from individuals who pay an undue amount of taxes. Each tax form should include a last page illustrating how the previous year's taxes were spent by category and allowing the taxpayer to indicate the percentage of tax they want allocated by category or to establish a new category. This could be done for allocation of taxes two years ahead to give time to make the budget transparent and to allow referendums to restore critical funding or allocated emergency funds for the unforeseen, but it should not be altered by legislation alone nor by judicial review unless it violated some clear Constitutional intent. I am sure that even a public poll on these lines at tax time would result in a tax pie significantly different than the one created by their "representatives" in their voting records for allocations or the one created by executive action and design.

Why Is This Idea Important?

Taxes are misspent and do not reflect popular will. The many pay and the few allocate, putting power into the hands of an elite in what should be a more direct democracy. Direct allocation of tax reflects the democratic ideal of popular rule of government. This would be direct communication and feedback from people to those sworn to carry out their demands. People might make mistakes, but they would be quicker to fix them. This empowers people and will mean taxation with real representation. As Jefferson asked of those who felt people unable to govern themselves, why then did they feel competent to govern them instead.

Idea # 767New Strategies and Techniques, taxation, representation, budget, public will, participatory democracy

Comments

David Langer 9 months ago

I had wanted to do something like this in an internet tax allocation system, but doing it at tax time makes PERFECT sense. Also, it ensures that everyone who pays taxes has a chance to weight in regardless of their technology. It is also very easy to associate the allocations with the tax amounts since they are on the same form.

One of my main concerns is how to set up the allocation groups. For example:
Major groups:
Education
Health Care
Defense
Transportation

Minor Groups:

Under Education:
K-12
College
Public Libraries

Under Health Care:
Preventive Care
Emergency Care
Research (Cancer, Stem Cells)

Under Defense:
Military Personnel Support (VA, Active Duty)
"War on Terror"
Military Occupations
Foreign Country Bases

Under Transportation:
Rail Infrastructure
Road Infrastructure
"Green" Energy Supply Infrastructure

The details would be hashed out by further votes with the funds collected, with a report on what we used where available in the next year's taxes (also available on the web of course, to save paper for those people who have access)

Nice one!

debdaveandpets 9 months ago

Giving people more say in how thier money is spent is good, not like VAT, Fair tax which are not fair taxes at all, but sounds more like pay off money to the mob. Two people trade something to help each other then a third party says they have to help him or he will hurt them. Not very fair I would say. I would have a resource tax. I would tax people on the resources thay use up, destroyed, or any thay keep for thier private use. The resources of the earth should be shared by all and if someone use up, destroyed, or keep any for just thier private use thay should pay the rest of us for those resources through a resource tax that can be use to pay for a fair government that helps everyone and any money left over can be rebated back to the rest of us. Since the rich use the most resources thay would pay the highest taxes. If you reclaimed resources you can get a tax credit, like cleaning up a river or recyling trash.

copa 9 months ago

I like the idea of a resource tax and returning many things to true commonwealths as they once were. Privatization and commoditification of everything, even relationships marks the final stages of monopoly capital and the so called "free market". In my view, the corporations should pay a percentage of gross income as well as resource taxes, and even 2-3% would outstrip the 25% we pay out of our paltry wages. Why should income traded for labor be taxed as profit? Bit if we pay individual income tax then it should be allocated directly for what we want it to do, not constantly wasted and misspent on everything but human needs and community building. Do you think our social problems could not be solved with far less than the hundreds of billions going now to endless war and bailouts for banking and insurance industries? There is clearly enough surplus to make people comfortable for much less work, and to restore the planet, but instead it continues to do just the opposite for the benefit of the few. With a percentage of the military budget allocated to health and prevention who would need health insurance? "Fair tax" of purchases, cutting off at a certain level of wealth, is a regressive tax that benefits the wealthy and drains the poor. It still gets allocate by an elite. If we had direct allocation we could also reduce taxation. Each new president spends a larger budget on things we do not need. Thanks for your comments and ideas.

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