Cash Rich Tech Surprises

What constitutes rich? Net wealth or salary? What if you inherited some money and you have an average salary? To me, over 150K is wealthy...does anyone agree. My reasoning, you could do pretty much anything on just 150K a year.

Sarah show your right ear some day?

Hey mogleyman - did it ever occur to you if you tax the rich way more by % then the economy will be very inefficient and grow much slower. That's b/c the rich people are the only ones that know how to make a lot of money - that's why they're rich. And then what happens to the tax base??? Oh yeah, you and the rest of ultra-liberals were smoking pot in the rest room during 6th grade economics class.

i guess i'm an investor and blogger as well - why don't they put me on this stupid program?

unfortunately, having flat tax will eliminate many tax deductions for the rich, so the politicians, who are mostly rich will not go for it. too bad... think about all the non-profit and charity organizations that the rich use as a tax haven. if these tax benefits go away, so too will cash donations along w/ jobs associated with them. plus there are other social costs involved when we don't have these institutions to provide for the needy, although on a separate issue...

Flat tax and sales tax are not as great as many think they are. Flat tax assumes that 20% of a person's $10,000 per year salary is just as fair as 20% of a person's $1,000,000 salary. On the surface this seems fair, but a guy making $10k/year is living in poverty and can barely feed and cloth himself. Also, often overlooked is the definition of income. For example, Buffet has a tax rate on his annual income of 17%, while his secretary has a tax rate of 30+%. Why is that? Well, Buffet gets the majority of his income from Capital Gains, whereas the secretary gets paid a salary. Salaried income is taxed at a graduating scale, while Capital Gains are taxed at a flat rate. In many flat tax proposals, the definition of income leaves out a lot of the "rich" sources of incomes, and many republicans want to eliminate CG Tax alltoghether. Sales tax systems are not fair either because a poor person spends a much greater proportion of their income on necessities than a rich person does. This forces the poor to pay a much greater percentage of their income in taxes than those that spend much less. There is a lot of fine print on these tax proposals that make all of these proposals anything but simple, or fair.

flat tax is a good idea but politicans like to buy votes with use of the tax system----i agree everybody should pay some tax even if govt turns around and gives some back thru their social programs which is nothing more than vote buying with the tax dollars of the american people

What is "prosperities county"?

You don't have to raise the tax rate on the wealth! Just get rid of the tax deductions above $250,000. Now you will hear all the charity crying up a storm as their free money will be cut!

Well said pthisstrvid. I still like the flat tax idea. Just think of the government building that could be turned into Golds gyms.

mogleyman, there really is no such thing as a tax. The very act of taxing is regressive in that all those taxes will be passed along to the consumer. Sure, for goods and services that are not necessary those companies will go out of business. for those that stay in business they'll simply pass the new taxes on to the consumer. Further, all enterprises that can be moved out of the country will be moved.