The Issue Of Taxation Of The United States Essay

The American government has struggled with the issue of taxes and the budget for over a hundred years. Class conflict, adversarial political parties, and convoluted economic philosophies have resulted in a never-ending debate over taxation. The New York Times newspaper article, “Senate Panel Vote Backs Budget Plan”, from June 1993, discusses the current feelings of the time in regards to the budget and taxation. Moreover, the article mentions factors such as democrat-republican debate, trickle down economics, and high verse low taxes for the middle class. The issues discussed in this 1993 article differ only slightly from the taxation conversation of today. However, now in 2011, we face a budget crisis that threatens the American economy

The debates on tax cuts are making their way to headlines of every radio station, newspaper, and television station in America. Today, tax cuts would only benefit the wealthy and wouldn’t really benefit the lower class. “The administration and it’s congressional alleys are proposing to sharply reduce taxation of the business income primarily benefiting

"The most perennially political issues in the United States is the question of how much Americans should be taxed. Indeed, discounted over taxes was one of the major motivating factors in the revolution that established the United States as an independent nation"("Extending Tax Cuts", 1). Since taxes are one of the biggest topics in politics, there is always going to be two sides of the subject, and Taxes will always strike controversy in our country. The topic of having the rich pay more in tax has a deep history to consider, and there will always be both supporters and critics who continue to debate this topic.

“Considering that the top marginal tax rate for the wealthiest Americans today is 35 percent, that figure seems astounding. But it's true that in the 1950s, the top marginal tax rates were over 90 percent” (Farley). Many may think, how does lower taxes on the highest income earners have an effect on them. Simple, less funding of programs that enrich the quality of one’s life. When the government does not receive the needed funding spending cuts must be made. Unfortunately, these spending cuts are more often than not are on government programs that help those who are

This week the reading by Frank in the Inequality Reader caught my attention. It talked about how the current tax system in the US is not conducive to helping society. It also mentions how an increase in taxes for the top earners would help not only the poor but also the rich. He also includes how the wealthy “have been made worse off, on balance, by recent tax cuts” (Frank 732). This reading made me think of the current GOP tax plan being signed and debated in congress.

There could have been outside elements that could have swayed Bush or Obama into extending the tax cuts but private interests were clearly involved to allow this to continue. Over the past couple of years, the government is faced with shut down because of law of funds and debt but still continue to allow the hyper wealthy and large conglomerates to continue to reap immense profits without paying their fair share.

In America, we enjoy freedoms that we often take for granted. We have the power to decide things for ourselves, such as our leaders, our rights, and our liberties. We have the ability to debate and evaluate the effectiveness and the relevance of a law or bill, and we must use this power when it comes to the methods of taxation. Currently, the US uses a progressive income tax as its means to raise revenue. Deborah Lee and Richard A. Grant, in “Counterpoint: Expanding Sales Taxes Helps the Rich, Hurts the Poor,” believe that a progressive income tax is the fairest and most constructive ways to fund the government, and that such a tax benefits the poor more than a sales tax.

Taxation is an issue that has plagued the United States even prior to the founding of the

The United States Federal Government currently functions on a “progressive tax system”. A progressive tax system is based on ability to pay and therefor requires members of higher socioeconomic standing to pay higher federal income tax rates. The idea is that wealthy people, whether they are wealthy as a product of their own intelligence and labor or wealthy by inheritance, can afford to pay higher tax rates and still maintain a quality of life well beyond what is considered livable or even standard. This procedure understandably creates a lot of upset in the upper-class community. According to the IRS, in 2007, more that 44% of income tax revenues came from the top 5% of earners and more than 50% came from the top 10%. In the same year, the 400 wealthiest Americans, bringing in an average adjusted gross income of $345 million paid an average federal income tax rate of 17%, whereas the average tax payer during the same time period paid only 9.3% of their gross income to the federal taxes. In 2010, about 45% of all

For some time now, the United States economy has been trending in the direction of social injustice. Income inequality is ever expanding, and the primary reason is that those people at the very top of the income distribution are accumulating wealth at rates never seen before. The rich are getting richer to the extent that they are driving a massive wedge between socio-economic classes within the United States, and the impacts are far-reaching. Combating this inequality begins with an examination of the economic policies currently in place. Federal tax policy is an ideal place to start, considering the prominent role it plays in determining the distribution of wealth.

The congressional proposed tax changes will adversely affect the U.S. middle class. According to Pew Research, which claims to obtain its data through non-partisan demographic research and public opinion polling, the American middle class, defined as those making two-thirds to double the median income, makes up about half the population. Further information in this paper is obtained from reliable sources such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, which are typically regarded as center to left, As well as right-leaning sources such as Forbes magazine, whose chief editor, Steve Forbes, is a major Republican. The Congressional Budget Office and the US Census Bureau also supply reliable, researched data, and both Time Inc, Money, and

The current federal income tax system in the United States (U.S.) is progressive based on the vertical equity principle. However, the tax code is getting increasingly complex and the wealthy are able to avoid paying taxes through loopholes. Hence, more people are yearning for fairness in taxation. With the looming 2016 presidential election, Senator Rand Paul’s proposal of ‘Fair and Flat Tax’ appears to have the most significant change to the current tax policy and I will now analyze if this proposal will improve the efficiency and equity of the U.S. tax code.

In the constant debate over what should and should not be taxed and how much a person should have to pay in taxes, one issue remains constant. That is the question as to whether or not the U.S. should have a fair tax or a flat tax. This has been interesting for me because I hear a lot of debate on both sides about the legitimacy of both methods. There is an overwhelming feeling, fueled, in part, by the media, that wealthy Americans are not paying their fair share of taxes, when, in fact, that is not the case. In fact, an article from the directory About.com reports the following statistics from the Office of Tax Analysis: According to the Office of Tax Analysis, the U.S. individual income tax is "highly progressive," with a small group of higher-income taxpayers paying most of the individual income taxes each year. -In 2002 the latest year of available data, the top 5 percent of taxpayers paid more than one-half (53.8 percent) of all individual income taxes, but reported roughly one-third (30.6 percent) of income. -The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 33.7 percent of all individual income taxes in 2002. This group of taxpayers has paid more than 30 percent of individual income taxes since 1995. -Moreover, since 1990 this group 's tax share has grown faster than their income share. -Taxpayers who rank in the top 50 percent of taxpayers by income pay virtually all individual income taxes. In all years since 1990, taxpayers in this group have paid over 94 percent of all

There is an issue that has plagued the United States even prior to the founding of the nation. That issue is fair taxation. While the American Colonists were being taxed unfairly without parliamentary representation, average modern Americans are being taxed unfairly without legal representation. Some hold the belief that the progressive tax code employed by the United States to be fair as the wealthy pay a higher marginal tax rate. The operative word there being marginal. As the upper class typically has a much lower effective tax rate since they are able to afford tax attorneys who are able to find many deductions that average citizens are unaware of. Mitt Romney is a prime example of low effective rates of taxation. According to CNN Money, Mitt Romney made twenty-one million dollars in one year, but only paid an effective rate of fifteen percent, which is much lower than the rate he should be paying. The progressive tax system is one that is littered with loopholes, but those are only known to those with the means to search them out as the federal tax code spans seventy-thousand of pages of convoluted text. Not even the highest paid tax accountants will ever read anywhere near the full volume of tax laws. By the tax code being as long as it is, few are able to reap the full benefits of the tax code. The level of complicated text is not the only major issue with the federal tax code.

Our society today has strived to become familiar with our present tax system, but some just cannot come to terms with it. The current tax code is unfair to those who are single, work for under $50, 000 dollars per year, or have large families. The high tax percentages and low exemptions make it difficult for the average worker to prosper and get ahead in today’s world. The tax system also discourages citizens from saving and investing their earnings, ultimately pulling down the American economy. Over the past few years numerous proposals for a flat tax rate have surfaced and been reviewed. These proposals promise large tax cuts, fewer federal forms and costs, and larger exemptions (Armey 2). The United States should adopt a flat