The 14% Solution is an idea from Frederik Pohl. I think the name is a Sherlock Holmes reference. The basic idea is that taxpayers can opt to pay extra taxes in exchange for more control over the budget.

A taxpayer can opt to pay from 1-7% extra federal tax in exchange for a line-item veto on where a percentage of their taxes go. For each 1% extra they pay, they can control 2% of their money, to a maximum of 14%. So, for instance, you could pay 2 1/2% extra and say that 5% of your taxes must go to space exploration or cannot go to senator salaries. The 14%ers can actually exercise considerable budgetary (and therefore political) control. Over time the program can potentially change the government overall by hitting politicians where it hurts--- their pockets..

Well merely passing the Fair Tax would stop all that stuff and help everyone once and for all, and eliminate the IRS and many other superflous jobs being done to support the stupid and complex tax structure that we have already.

I'd rather just see income taxes go away, to be replaced with a flat tax rate on spending. No more income-tax evasion. No more audits. No more stupid forms to fill out once a year. And more people actually paying taxes instead of either putting it off or finding creative, albeit slightly illegal, ways to pay less.

But the rich people would whine because they'd pay more in taxes for their Mercedes Benzes and their Bentleys than the rest of us do for our Fords and Toyotas.

The Fair tax is basically a National Sales tax on new purchases, a used car no sales tax, just a sales tax on new godds, of course I guess food would be in that as well, but you would not have anything at all taken out of your paycheck. There is currently a new book out about this by Neal Bortz a former lawyer and talk show host on WSB radio in Atlanta Georgia. Seems he's already selling quite a few of them and lobbying congress to pass this law.

This post has been edited by Houdini: Apr 8 2006, 11:07 PM

That is true, and I have been in favor of the national sales tax. It does not provide as much control over where the money goes as Pohl's idea, but if taxing or spending becomes unreasonable, people can reduce their taxable spending, and country folks like us can almost eliminate it for periods of time as a form of protest.

What I want to know is, does the IRS pay taxes?
How much does a private company have to pay in taxes to have their own force of agents (CPA's with guns) who at anytime can inforce the "laws" that they wish.
I am sure that if Americans got together we could create our own tax company that would inforce the the "laws" we wanted as well.
I thought we lived in a democracy (Ha Ha), where we had fair trade, the IRS is a monopoly. I want to pay my taxes to some other company that has nicer agents.
If I knew there would be a class on SWAT tactics I would have become a CPA a long time ago!!!!

Even if the IRS imparted a fair tax, the rich would only have to pay taxes on new purchases, I can go into another state (with cheaper taxes) to buy my car and then register it in my state. The poor still gets the shaft and the rich just has to think a bit harder. Meanwhile the middle class will have one more thing to worry about in their pursurt of security.
It sounds good on the surface but it is just as nasty as the current situation.

Well, there is another point that we have to consider when talking about taxes, and that is the deficit budget proposed/implemented by the government. No amount of reform to the tax system would give significant benefits to the people if the government budget is not balanced over a certain period of time, like say 5 or 10 years. To me, this is precisely the problem we are facing. Government budgets are in deficit and in order to cover this deficit, they start coming out with more ideas on how to increase their revenue... tax reform, more general sales tax etc. But the main problem now is expenditure. You can get more and more revenue but there is so many new stuff to spend on. It's like the situation where someone hits the multimillion jackpot but ends up a few years later in debt. The whole problem lies in expenditure.