The theory behind this system is that most people agree with the need to pay their taxes and support our democratic system of government, but they don’t agree with using their taxpayer dollars to personally fund all of the government agencies and projects that get formed without their input. By creating a government website – i.e. www.webtax.gov – which allows all taxpayers to interactively build “tax quorums” around the civil services that our government provides through interactive, online patronage we ease two major tensions with our current tax structure: 1) taxpayer unrest at how tax revenues are spent and 2) unpopular, excess government bureaucracy and waste. Each taxpayer has a finite tax liability each year and allowing them to interactively create and “donate” to the civil services that they deem necessary would lead to a statistical efficiency in government infrastructure. Only those services that reach a required quorum threshold through the interactive taxparticipants quorum method (IQTM) would receive funding. All tax “donations” would be itemized by each government agency and each taxpayer would receive a yearly summary of where all their tax monies were spent and for what projects they were used. This is a transparent, self-sustained tax structure that by its very nature cleans up government infrastructure and incentivizes taxpayers’ to more fully engage politically, which seems like two apparent goals of the current administration.
Interactive Tax Patronage System: Choose Which Taxes We Pay
Tags: taxes tax code interactive system
Comments (3)
Not a good idea. Let's simplify the income tax process to something like this:
1. Take what you earn (salary, bonus, tips, whatever) and subtract $50,000.
2. Pay 15 percent of what's left over (you don't get money back if you make less than $50,000, you just don't pay any taxes).
A person making $60,000 would pay about 3% in effective tax while the millionaires would pay something like 14.99%.
Seems (1) fair and (2) progressive and (3) so simple we won't need the IRS to be anything more than 10% of its current size.
I actually had a similar idea. Mine however was as part of the filing process for each person to pick say, 10 items in order of importance. There would be a list available as either on-line or hardcopy of what we could pick. Mine would include education, health care, welfare, public transportation, Space flight, science research, Environment protection, foreign aid, the various Gvt agencies that protect us such as the FAA, FDA etc. Actually, you run out of room eventually as there are probably agencies that I've never heard of but are enormassly helpful.
Giving people more of a say in how thier money is spent is a good thing, but the VAT and Fair tax 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.