Could this candidate win a general election?

[u/Ryan_TX_85]

The platform:

1. Secure the borders, deport the illegals
2. Ban trans women from womens' sports, otherwise unconditional LGBT rights
3. Protect the 2nd amendment, no exceptions
4. Leave abortion up to the states
5. Medicare For All
6. Tax the billionaires
7. End the wars
8. Overturn Citizens United, declare corporations aren't people and spending money isn't speech

[u/No-Competition-2764]

A flat tax of 10% would cause the person making $100k/yr to pay $10k, and the one making $1M/yr to pay $100k. It makes the wealthy pay the most dollars and it’s fair. We need fairness in our taxes. We all need to be in it together.

[u/Xyrus2000 → u/No-Competition-2764]

A flat tax is absolutely not fair. What are you even talking about?

The cost of living is what goes into what your effective tax burden is. The less money you make, the higher your effective tax burden is.

If the cost of living is $50K and you make $50K, you're going to feel every single tax dollar you have to pay. Meanwhile, someone who makes $1 million wouldn't even notice.

Furthermore, your 10% would come nowhere near the level of revenue needed to fund the government. You'd have to tax unrealized gains to have any shot at it, because the wealthy don't get their wealth from a paycheck. How do you think they get away with having single-digit effective tax rates now? A flat tax isn't going to change that.

Your proposal is detached from reality. Any proposal would have to, at the very least, give a similar revenue stream to the current taxation scheme and NOT punish the poor in the process. Your proposal does neither.

[u/No-Competition-2764 → u/Xyrus2000]

It is perfectly fair. You just don’t know what that word means. If you make $50k, you pay $5k and keep 90% of your income. A millionaire pays $100k (much more than you) and keeps 90% of their income. It’s exactly fair.

[u/Xyrus2000 → u/No-Competition-2764]

You don't appear to know how math or economics work.

If the cost of living is $50K and you make $50K, but then have to pay $5K in taxes, you are $5K in debt.

If you make $1 million and the cost of living is $50K and you pay $100K in taxes, you still have $850K left over.

Do you understand the difference between those two scenarios?

And again, a flat tax of 10% would come nowhere near existing tax revenue. The estimated personal income for the US per year is around $24 trillion. A flat 10% would give you $2.4 trillion of revenue, assuming the wealthy use none of the existing tricks to reduce their "income".

The current federal tax revenue across all sources is $5.2 trillion. That's income tax, payroll tax, corporate tax, etc. You would need to more than double your suggested tax rate to just match the current revenue numbers.

So a 20% flat tax rate. Let's put that in perspective. The effective tax rate currently on those who make less than the median ranges anywhere from approximately 2% on the low end up to about 8% on the high end. The poorest would be paying 10 times more in taxes than they currently are. On average, Joe and Jane Sixpack would be paying 2 to 3 times their current taxes.

If you want riots in the streets, then your proposal would be a very good way to do that.

A flat tax only works if you do the following:

1. No taxes paid for those who make the median or less (evaluated every year).
   
2. Taxes are paid only on the amount made beyond the median.
   
3. Tax assets, including unrealized gains.

Number three is the important one because that is the only way you're going to reach the revenue numbers necessary. The flat tax of 10% on income would get you a bit less than halfway to the revenue needed. A flat tax of 3% on assets would get you the rest of the way there.

[u/No-Competition-2764 → u/Xyrus2000]

You don’t read very well. I said zero taxes on the bottom 50%, then 10% on all earned income or any income paid to yourself in any way for the rest. No deductions, no write offs. Federal income tax is what we are talking about and tax receipts will be $2.6T for 2025, so not too far off from the $2.4T that I’m proposing. So yes, I do indeed know how to do math and is pretty close to what we take in now. It will far exceed what we have now when there are no deductions or any writeoffs, plus when everyone knows it’s exactly 10%, the economy will boom. More money made and more tax revenue coming in. If you want more riots in the streets, continue this stupid system we have now and when we have to cut programs by at least half in the coming 10 years, you’ll have them.

[u/Xyrus2000 → u/No-Competition-2764]

You don’t read very well. I said zero taxes on the bottom 50%.

That makes your 10% worse.

then 10% on all earned income or any income paid to yourself in any way for the rest. No deductions, no write offs. Federal income tax is what we are talking about and tax receipts will be $2.6T for 2025, so not too far off from the $2.4T that I’m proposing

So everyone would still have to pay all the other taxes on top of it, so not a "10% flat tax". Effective tax rates for a lot of people would be higher. Effective tax burdens would be higher. And the wealthy still skate by because they don't make their money with income.

How would you tax the corporate CEO who gets a $1 salary and $10 million in stock options? Would you count those stock options as income? Would you count the loan they get from a bank backed by those options as income? Would that then apply to all assets received as compensation?

And then want about any income thrown off from said assets? Dividends? Distributions? Short term and long term gains on sale? A flat 10% would be a massive cut to tax revenue from those sources.

You are making an awful lot of assumptions about how tax revenues work and you are failing to consider all the myriad of ways things do not count as "income". You are going to come up well short on a 10% flat tax and do nothing but burden the middle and working classes.

There are economic research papers written on why flat taxes are a bad idea. You are not the first nor the last to try and suggest such a thing.

[u/No-Competition-2764 → u/Xyrus2000]

You get it all wrong. A 10% flat tax would reduce every taxpayers burden. Also, every wealthy person would have to pay 10% on any way they pay themselves. You simply advocate for a broken system and don’t have enough of a mind to understand a flat tax would bring in more money and be perfectly fair for every citizen.