Taxes

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(03-23-2019, 12:37 AM)Bengalzona Wrote: Obviously, my point in the questions here is not to make serious policy proposals, which would pretty much be political poison to any politician that endorsed them.

BTW - Our household combined gross is well into six figures. Some of these things could affect me!!!!!!!

That's actually another reason I support a single flat tax rate for everyone. The brackets don't really account for cost of living. Same reason why I am all for State-decided minimum wage (and city-decided minimum wage) but not a huge fan of increasing the federal minimum wage a ton.

I know a couple who work in DC. They are right around that 5% bracket, but the cost of living is so much higher there that it isn't anything like if they made the same amount of money in Cincinnati.

A household making $250k and living in Alexandria, VA is the same cost-of-living-wise as a household making $160k in Cincinnati. It's still healthily upper-middle class, but it's not quite as impressive sounding.

If you live in Brooklyn, NY you need to make $250k/yr to have the same cost of living adjustment as someone making $127k/yr in Cincinnati.

There's just too much variation between cost of living in this country that brackets will never really properly cover them, and then to try to fix that you are delving back into the mess of deductions and the like which brought us to where we are now. Flat rate just makes too much sense.