quicksprout.com — As you already know the U.S. tax system is complicated. So complicated that in 1913 the tax code was 400 pages and today it?s 70,320 pages long. But instead of me rambling on for hours, I thought it would be fun to explain the complexity of the U.S. tax system in a visual format.
Feb 18, 2010 View in Crawl 4
sloppyjoes7Feb 19, 2010
Many States of the US have no income tax. Yet, these states (which have a GDP equal to a country) make it work through sales taxes.The argument that it "can't work" is ridiculous, because variations have been in effect for decades or centuries.
Closed AccountFeb 20, 2010
@LinuxPerson: Am I correct in assuming you are an Objectivist, then? Regardless, even in a universal, government run the labor is not forced upon medical personnel. They are free to apply for the positions as they see fit, and students are free to choose to go to medical school if they find being government bureaucrats appealing. Current doctors who don't like the idea can quit and offer their services instead to the kind of elective, unnecessary care that wouldn't be offered by the government (or, in case the government takeover of health care were only partial, into private hospitals and clinics which competed with public ones).As for the labor of the people who are forced to pay taxes in order to support such a system, if they are covered under it I once again must say I fail to see the difference between tax-funded health care and the public fire department. There are certain services that are considered necessary for everyone to have and for everybody to pay, so they come as part of the deal for living in a country. The army and police, which let the government continue existing as an entity, are the most basic. Firemen are less basic, but still considered necessary. I think health care should be considered necessary, too.
ShovelbabyFeb 20, 2010
To make sure that they are done thoroughly, they are very complicated. The degree of complexity goes up if you have investments, a home, children, a business, etc. That is why the tax preparation business is such a big business here.
ShovelbabyFeb 20, 2010
Sales taxes. That is what the fairtax and flat tax are about. They do away with income taxes and collect everything through sales taxes. The rich still pay more because they buy expensive things. The fairtax has a program where people get a rebate on the sales taxes that they pay for basic necessities. www.fairtax.org
agmlauncherFeb 21, 2010
If you're going to make me give you money, then YOU do my taxes, don't force me to do it for you. Im not going to dig my own grave. I'm still all for a national sales tax though. No more income tax, no more wasting people's time. Would improve the quality of life for a lot of Americans, and taxing what we buy rather than what we earn will help encourage us to save.
zoomakabuFeb 22, 2010
I've been to Canada. It's not the f**king great, plus it's cold as hell.
jgzmanFeb 25, 2010
Piss-poor graphic. No sense of scale, nothing related to anything else. Could have just written the text in comic sans and gotten the same effect.