What is the purpose for income tax?
 

This has been bugging me for a little while. The argument over who should pay what percentage of their income to the government goes back and forth. I hear that the wealthy should pay more. I hear the working class should get more breaks. I hear each person should pay his fair share.Most people have only arbitrary answers when asked to define wealthy, working class, and fair share. The strawmen get dragged out. Warren Buffett pays less tax than his secretary is a popular if misleading one. What bothers me is that people don't seem to stop and think why those taxes are collected or how we came to accept the numbers we currently use.

My understanding is that income taxes are collected from the people of the United States to fund the activities of the United States government. It would seem to me that the idea of having a budget that is anything other than balanced is just plain idiotic. Our government is a non-profit organization so it should collect only what it needs to run the programs and possibly a little extra for a rainy day fund. When receipts go down either expenses have to go down or income tax rates must increase. That is just basic common sense, but we don't give it much consideration.

It seems that we have come to accept a budgetary process that is completely disjointed. The government spends whatever it wants in ever increasing amounts without any real consideration of where the money comes from. Programs are started and empires are expanded as the political figures do their dance with each side giving misleading soundbytes to garner support. Then to actually fund the budget the government establishes arbitrary tax rates that aren't based on anything other than gaining votes. When is the last time someone actually divided the total expenses and divided that number up to match up against available taxpayers?

I hear that our goal is fairness in the tax system. Is taking a disproportionately large percentage of money from a disproportionately small number of people really fair or does it just feel good? Does it really make sense to have a progressive tax system that comes packed with loopholes to allow the people we say we want to pay more to actually pay less? Are the tax tables really designed to offset government expenses or merely to take money from the rich and give it to the poor? It doesn't really succeed at either.

The question in all of this is simply, are taxes a means to fund necessary functions of government or are they just a way to play Robin Hood?

The government has no conscience. Just an appetite and the will to survive.

Its never been about fairness or wealth redistribution. Its allways been about hunger and preserving one's political future. Nothing more, nothing less.

I'm right with you lookout. It bothers me when people want the government to solve all of their problems and think nothing of the fact that the government is so inefficient with our tax dollars it's absurd. For example, lets compare the government with Habitat for Humanity (personal bias, one of my favorite NGO's). According to the BBB website, Habitat "Uses of Funds as a % of Total Expenses:
Programs: 81% Fund Raising: 15% Administrative: 4%". That's 81% of all $$ given to them that goes directly into the work they offer as an organization. Granted the workers who help build the houses are volunteers which helps maintain these percentages, but lets be real who do you think is doing a better job per $ given to help the genuinely needy have quality shelter and dignity?

I'll take Robin Hood for 50 LO.

And the purpose of the government is to hand no-bid contracts to people like Halliburton, and to give no-strings bailouts to failures.

Oddly enough, you can say the same thing about a corporation.

There actually was no problem with this at the beginning of the war. Later it was a problem.

Personal Income tax is only half the picture.But personal income tax rates are subject to checks and balances.

The poor ain't got no money - moot

The middle class have lots of votes - check

The rich kick in more campaign funds - balance

Ain't easy being a politician. :haha:

True, but a corporation doesn't have police power.

Yes they do...they borrow the governments.

Ftw.

No bid contracts are ALWAYS a problem.

Usually, but sometimes no-bid follow on contracts are practical and expedient.

Which is exactly what they were in the case of Haliburton at the time. Same for another independent contracting organizations and companies that had been in the business of supplying services to the military for years. There is a lot of ignorance and parroting of complaints about how this system works and how these companies, smartly, positioned themselves to do the good work that they did. The abuses cannot be ignored and neither can the good.

Which is why it was unfortunate that several Republican Senators blocked the passage of the Contractors and Federal Spending Accountability Act last year....it passed in the House on a bi-partisan voice vote.