I favor a mileage tax for vehicle registration.
Well, I for one much favor a per-gallon tax to a per-mile. Inventivize fuel economy, for one. (Basically, if I had to sum up Economics in one sentence, it would be: "People respond to incentives, whether you want them to or not."
Besides, how would you record the mileage without Big Brother tactics? Just reading the odometer is insufficient: too many people know how to disconnect a cable!
@Rod Knox Social Security makes little in the percentage of taxes paid since contributions are capped at an income of 118,500. The 1% ers are earners above about $440,000 /yr, 5% ers are above about $162,000 /yr. The link below shows the percentages that people pay without SS and medicare and with SS and medicare in federal taxes.
taxfoundation.org/blog/how-much-do-people-pay-taxes
The rich pay more and a higher percentage than middle income folks.
Until you get to the ultra-rich, the 0.1%, the 0.01% or even the 0.001%. Note the rate they pay still exceeds the top 20% ers as well as the middle class. The total amount the 0.1% ers (income above $2M) pay (16%) in federal taxes still exceeds the bottom 80%;s total of 11%.
Still think our taxes aren’t progressive enough? You can tax the top 1% at 90% and we still won’t fix our budget deficit or start to pay down the national debt. Giving the government $10 a BBL of oil is just feeding their addiction.
I’ve yet to read a legitimate benefit of a per mile tax over a fuel tax.
Public Service Announcement
I Have The Perfect Solution To The Debate Between Those Believing Taxes Are Too Low And Those Thinking They Are High Enough. For The Folks Wishing To Pay More I Am Posting The Address For Their Generous Contributions:
Gifts to the United States
U.S. Department of the Treasury
Credit Accounting Branch
3700 East-West Highway, Room 622D
Hyattsville, MD 20782
No sense in arguing about this. Feeling slighted because your taxes are insufficient? Step up and get your check in the mail as folks have been doing since 1843.
Who knows, if enough volunteers came forward and sent extra money perhaps taxes could be lowered for those being taxed too much.
Here’s a link with a little explanation about the account:
https://www.fms.treas.gov/faq/moretopics_gifts.html
CSA
legitimate benefit of a per mile tax over a fuel tax
Absolutely agree, @missileman Kinda seems like the same thing, isn’t it? For a given vehicle, if I drive more miles, I use more gas and pay more tax.
If I have a big vehicle that uses more gas per mile, I pay more tax. A smaller high mpg vehicle, less tax.
Semi’s damage roads far, far more than light cars and trucks so diesel taxes are higher than gas AND they drive way more miles so pay way more tax.
All this is simple enough to work and always has IF the money is used for the roads and bridges.
If the pres wants to raise taxes on fuel, then man-up and ask Congress to vote in a gas tax increase. That would be transparent to the consumer, so we won’t do that.
If the pres wants to raise taxes on fuel, then man-up and ask Congress to vote in a gas tax increase
That’s EXACTLY what he’s doing. He proposed it as part of the Budget which Congress has to vote on. Now we’ll see if Congress will man-up and vote it down.
I wonder how homeowners on heating oil and farmers will feel about paying $0.25/gallon for mass transit/etc…
Geez, energy taxes have a “regressive” structure that hits the poorest much harder, proportionately, than the rich. Hardly what I’d expect from "the Party of the Workingman!"
Oh, wait: it’s exactly what I’d expect from the (21st century) Party of the Workingman. Unfortunately.
Geez, energy taxes have a "regressive" structure that hits the poorest much harder, proportionately, than the rich. Hardly what I'd expect from "the Party of the Workingman!"
The Democrats are just trying to catch up to the rape of the middle class the “Moral Majority” has been doing for decades.
The shell games with federal and state taxes and expenditures is quite successful. Politicians want their constituents to believe they are being misstreated currently while offering to turn the situation around into their favor in return for $upport and votes. I have found it laughable how FICA taxes are conveniently included or excluded by a source to suit their agenda.
So it’s okay to do “x” if your opponents have done “x” as well? I pointed out how the left has abandoned the working class…I never said the right wing hadn’t. Betrayal hurts more when it comes from “friends”…
As for one, I do not intend to be anybody’s " token" concern. Better to have a cathartic wake-up call, than continue to lose clout. If You Know Who loses PA in 2016, you’ll see wholesale changes in the “Joe 6-pack vs. the Granolaheads” power structure–you’d almost HAVE to.
The “working class” has 50 shades of green @Joe. And I enjoy a bowl of granola on occasion despite my dirty fingernails and well worn blue collar.
I’m not in favor of the wealthy being hammered in the name of “fairness”. If someone builds a better mousetrap and earns a billion dollars a year they should keep as much of it as possible.
Regarding that 50% tax rate from the Obama adminstration, they said that was for a START.
Assume for the sake of discussion that they START with 60% and the wealthy are fine with that.
How naive does one have to be to not think that the following year the “budget shortfall” and massive spending will rear its head again. Then what? 70%? 80%? 100%?
What SHOULD be done before any tax increase is to stop all fraud and waste. Period. Jail without condition anyone involved in fraud and anyone wasteful with taxpayer jobs should lose their jobs and the retirement plan and benefits associated with it.
I also consider Warren Buffet a hypocrite in regards to his tax plan. Buffet, and others of his ilk, have an office full of lawyers and accountants bleeding the tax code dry to assure they pay as little as possible. Much like the Bill Gates Foundation giving the needy Warren Buffett Foundation hundreds of millions of dollars some years ago. All an IRS game.
Regarding waste, there was a story recently about the U.S. giving 20 million dollars to some 3rd world African country to fight HIV. Most of the money disappeared and no one knows where it went. My guess is buried in Switzerland…
That is just one of many examples of where the “tax the rich” money goes…
So it's okay to do "x" if your opponents have done "x" as well? I pointed out how the left has abandoned the working class...I never said the right wing hadn't. Betrayal hurts more when it comes from "friends".
I agree with you. I don’t like the trend of either party. There are individuals of each party I like. But not either party as a whole. They both try to screw us…but in different ways.
I'm not in favor of the wealthy being hammered in the name of "fairness". If someone builds a better mousetrap and earns a billion dollars a year they should keep as much of it as possible
I don’t think anyone said we should hammer the wealthy. How about just taxing them the same rate as the rest of us. The top 1% have as much wealth as the bottom 34%…so their rate should be higher. What about the guy who spends 80 hours a week working and building a small company with MORE employees then most hedge funds. How come his tax rate is HIGHER then the hedge fund manager.
Lets go back to when the country was founded…then they would be the only ones paying taxes since most of their income is from business in the form of stock options. When this country was founded there was no income tax on individuals.
I also consider Warren Buffet a hypocrite in regards to his tax plan. Buffet, and others of his ilk, have an office full of lawyers and accountants bleeding the tax code dry to assure they pay as little as possible.
I know many millionaire/billionaires do. But if beating the tax code was Warren Buffet’s motive…he wouldn’t propose a higher tax rate for him and others like him. That doesn’t pass the smell test.
Much like the Bill Gates Foundation giving the needy Warren Buffett Foundation hundreds of millions of dollars some years ago
Was that a Fox News report…Because it’s the EXACT OPPOSITE. Warren Buffet gave several Billion dollars to the Bill and Linda Gates Foundation.
Warren Buffet gave $31 billion to the Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation, a foundation that has done great good already and continues to try to do things like create and deliver clean water technologies to parched poor countries and setup systems to deliver disease-fighting vaccinations to impoverished peoples in the world. This is a truly philanthropic organization working to do good. I have no doubt that Mr. Buffet, a close friend of Bill Gates, has given even more billions to the foundation, but the $31 billion was the start.
Mr. Buffet has openly opposed the current tax laws that allow multimillionaires and multibillionaires with staffs of tax lawyers to get away with paying little or no taxes, however he also has an obligation to the investors in Berkshire-Hathaway to keep the company as profitable as possible within the laws. He takes his obligations seriously.
For those that criticize him, I can only ask it they’re taking advantage of any credits and deductions available to them or are sending in extra money to the government every year. I know I’m not. If you’re not, than you might want to look in the mirror before criticizing Warren Buffet.
I have no doubt that Mr. Buffet, a close friend of Bill Gates, has given even more billions to the foundation, but the $31 billion was the start.
Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are bridge playing partners. Warren for years new he wanted to give much of his fortune away, but was unsure who/what to give it to. When Bill and Melinda started the Gates foundation, Warren decided that this was an extremely worthy cause and decided that’s where his money should go.
@insightful - “I’d like to thank y’all for picking up the slack.” WE’RE not picking up the slack. Your grandchildren, great-grandchildren (and beyond) are picking up the slack.
@MikeInNH & @“the same mountainbike” - you guys are lucky. In New Hampshire (so I hear on the news) you do not have to choose a party affiliation. You can register as an “independent” and show up on primary day and decide then whether you want to vote as a republican or democrat. SHOULD be like that everywhere, at least for laypersons who aren’t partisans or party activists.
Me, I started out as a registered republican because I believe in balanced budgets, low taxes, and smaller gov’t, but quickly became disillusioned with the “Republican” party. They make a lot of noise about debt/deficits when a Democrat is in the White House, but when a Republican is Prez, they cut taxes and spend spend spend like no tomorrow and go on the Sunday talking head shows and say “Deficits Don’t Matter”. Seems to me like Republicans are for everything that hurts the working class (trickle down economics, right-to-work-for-less-money, privatize SS i.e.-gamble your retirement in the stock market, voucherize Medicare) then use social issues like gay marriage and abortion to manipulate working class religious people to vote against their own economic well being. For ME, the final straw was when Bush/Cheney were re-elected right before my DRIVERS LICENSE came up for renewal. Now they ask you if you want to change your party affiliation on your DRIVERS LICENSE form, so I formally left the Republican party and nowadays I brag about leaving the Republican party. What a national embarrassment Bush was. For people who say Obama is worst prez ever, I say, were you not in the country from 2001 - 2009?
I agree if taxes are too confiscatory folks won’t work hard or innovate. How about a constitutional “Income Tax Cap”. Where I live, we have both a State and County property tax cap. If you think about it, today, depending on the state and county where you live, one could be paying about 60% in income taxes: 39.6 Fed + Medicare surcharge, + State Tax as high as 11% in Hawaii, + county + “township” piggyback tax. The taxes are TOO D*** HIGH! At the same time, its not fair that some overeducated stuffed suit on Wall Street who makes a 9 figure income shuffling numbers around on a spreadsheet pays a lower rate than those of us who make a living by the sweat of our brow, lifting heavy things with herniated backs and torn rotator cuffs, etc. Come on, fair is fair. This country would come to a stop in a week without the gearheads, grease monkeys, truck DRIVERS, people who load / unload boxes from trucks, repair streets & bridges, and on and on. . . We EARN AND DESERVE decent health insurance and a REAL retirement.
Another epiphany I had. We PHYSICALLY SEE the welfare mothers in the supermarket buying baby formula and diapers with food stamps. . . BUT. . . WE DON’T SEE, or interact with, all of the investment bankers who wrecked the economy with their derivatives trading, bad mortgages, pyramid schemes, etc. They all got 8 and 9 figure bonuses which they get to KEEP, nobody went to prison (except Bernie Madoff which is another story), and we, the taxpayers, get to pay off all their bad bets. I’m NOT saying its acceptable that we have so many people living on food stamps, BUT, most of those people are just trying to eke out a survival. The investment banker crowd are sipping fine wine eating gourmet food sitting back in their penthouse suites and yachts and laughing at the American Taxpayers, aren’t THEY welfare queens too?
Not to mention the fact that part of the reason why so many are on food stamps in the first place is because the Wall Street / Investment Banker crowd have closed down so many factories and moved them overseas, having bought up so many legislators with their lobbyists to get the free trade agreements in place to do so.
A colleague of mine refers to me as a “Rockerfeller Republican”, then follows it up with, “Don’t worry, there are no more Rockerfeller Republicans, the “conservatives” ran them all out of the party.”
(Not off-topic - Hey, I did mention my DRIVERS LICENSE renewal - 
)
Oh Ed, you’re making my head hurt. In Minnesota you don’t register as anything. You go in and vote for either party, DFL, GOP, Socialist, Communist, etc. You just can’t cross party lines on the ballot. So if you vote for one Communist, you have to vote for all of them for the various offices. I’d never vote for a Communist though because their cars are terrible. I don’t think the Socialist cars are any better but most socialists don’t drive anyway, they just have wine in outdoor restaurants and read poetry and philosophy all day, oblivious to the real world.
Sorry to make another off-topic post, but I’m fired up now; can’t resist - - -
Did anyone else see that Martin Schkreli (sp?) sociopath testifying (or more accurately, pleading the 5th) before Congress the other day? Put me in mind of that Dave Chappelle sketch, if any of you are familiar with “Chapelle’s Show”, except this was real. Did you see that smug smirk on his face? Then Rep. Elijah Cummings yells at him, “This is not funny, Mr. Schkreli (sp?)! PEOPLE ARE DYING!” Then afterwards he tweets that the congresspersons are “imbeciles”. . . In other countries, they sometimes take people like that out behind the courthouse and put a bullet in their heads, that usually takes care of the smirk on their face. . .
I’d say a guy like Bernie Sanders is too too far to the left for me to ever vote for him, BUT, when you see a greedy greedy pig like Schkreli (sp?) smirking and snarky and oh so arrogant on tv, you start to think to yourself, hey, maybe a little socialism is a healthy thing. . . just sayin’. . .
(I’d google the greedy pig’s name to find out how to spell it correctly, but the longer I even think about him, the more angry I get. . . )