ItIsSoOver posted...
Certain people (who probably share a lot of views with TC) aren't in favor of a flat tax, which could fix this issue
Yes and no. The problem with a flat tax is that losing, say, half your income when you make $20k is devastating, but losing half your income when you make $20M has very little impact on quality of life (and none whatsoever on your ability to survive). To that end, if it's determined that the tax needs are X% of the country's total income, taxing everyone X% is going to disproportionately hurt the lower class without actually doing that much to alleviate the overall tax burden. However it works,
something
needs to be done to ensure that people whose basic survival hinges on keeping as much of their income as possible get to do so.
Are tax brackets the best solution? Maybe, maybe not. The problem with tax brackets isn't that the idea doesn't work at a fundamental level, it's that the system of deductions and exemptions needed to make it work is too complicated for anyone without a good (and expensive) accountant to take full advantage of, plus there's been significant lobbying to ensure that those deductions work in favour of those who don't actually need them because they're the ones with the resources needed to lobby.
I could see a flat tax working with a much higher minimum income threshold (like you get taxed the greater of X% or whatever takes you down to $75k), but even that would require some rejigging to catch the multibillionaires who ostensibly only make like $10 a year because of how they've structured their wealth. You'd also probably still end up needing some extra deductions/credits (like $75k goes a lot further for a single person than for a person with three kids), which pretty quickly starts devolving into the same overcomplicated nonsense we've got now.