[tophcfa]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

Great idea! Where do you feel the surplus should come from? I mean before you can run a surplus, you have to pay off the debt. You have to have a 0 balance, before you can have a +1 balance.

Who should pay for this? Seriously, I'm totally game to consider and assume and play the numbers game.

My idea for your proposal:

Impose a luxury tax on all "new" motor vehicles with an MSRP over $35,000. Make that a 1% luxury tax. And if the MSRP is over $50k, make it a 1.5 luxury tax. For vehicles with an MSRP of over $100k (Bentley, anyone?) make it a 2% luxury tax.

Impose a 1% income tax on all income, PRE-deduction, on any salary over $200,000. Take that 1% right off the top, and THEN you can do all your deductions as usual. No one earning more than $200k per year in salary should be getting so many deductions that they don't pay anything in income tax. This guarantees that they'll pay *something* and that whatever amount it is, won't put them in the poor house.

Impose an additional 1% tax on all income derived from interest, capital gains, stock dividends, PRE-deduction. If you cashed it in, you pay a tax on it. Period. Deduct to your heart's delight AFTER the coffers get their first 1%.

Reduce the deductions available to corporations to a 1% minimum. That way, if a corporation does a bang-up job at generating revenue and is able to find every possible tax loophole to avoid paying any tax - they'll still be on the hook for 1% of their gross receipts.

Add a millionaire tax - not on millionaires who HAVE over 1M - but rather, anyone who EARNS more than 1M per year. These days, it's not uncommon for somewhat wealthy people to have more than a million in assets, and still only be earning a modest (by today's standards) salaries, and put their kids through law school and cover the cost of a yearly vacation without a headache. But I'm talking about the people who earn that much in a single year, on a yearly basis.

If you earned over 1m (gross) in 2018 AND you earned 1m in 2019 (gross) then you hit the jackpot. And you should pay for it. You can pay however little you can get away with paying on the first $500k - but anything over that will cost you a 5% pre-deduction tax. So if you can manage to not pay any income tax at all on the first $500k, you did a good job (or your accountant did, anyway) and congrats. You'll still be on the hook for 5% of the rest, and that 5% can't be offset by deductions.

Then - the whole medical insurance thing. If you have MORE than a certain amount of money, and choose not to buy into health insurance, you can just go ahead and kick in $1000/month to the pool. That way - god forbid you end up with a disease that keeps you alive for a LONG time - but only at so much expense that you end up losing your mansion and housekeeper and Bentley - you'll be covered. And if you don't get sick, that money can cover the housekeeper, who you're probably paying off the books anyway.

Apparently you didn't read my post. What exactly do you not understand about the difference between cutting spending versus increasing taxes? There is more than one way to skin a cat.