![]() Perry's plan would exacerbate the problem - and likely balloon the deficit even further. ![]() Even before the recession, the middle class was being left behind. The three-fifths of people in the middle class saw less than 40 percent income growth during the same period - and the bottom fifth grew incomes just 18 percent. Perry's plan was unveiled the same day as a new Congressional Budget Office report showing economic inequality is widening in this country.įrom 1979 to 2007, people in the richest 1 percent grew their after-tax income by 275 percent. Nearly everybody making under $50,000 would see a huge tax increase.) The Tax Policy Center says a low-income family making $31,000 a year would lose its $5,147 tax return under Perry's plan, for example. Flat taxes invert that logic, giving the rich a huge tax break and often burdening the poor. We have progressive taxation - in which people with higher incomes pay a higher tax rate than those at the lower end of the scale - for a reason: People on the low end are less able to pay. It makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, for no better purpose than making the rich richer and the poor poorer. The flat tax is Republican-led class warfare. What are the virtues of the flat tax? Joel Mathis and Ben Boychuk, the RedBlueAmerica columnists, debate the issue. Advocates tout the virtues of a simplified tax code critics say the tax would fall disproportionately on the poor. Is America ready for a flat tax? Back in the late 1990s, Steve Forbes ran for president proposing a "flat tax" in which everybody - rich and poor - would pay exactly the same percentage of their income in taxes.įorbes' idea failed, but GOP presidential candidates Herman Cain and Rick Perry have proposed a variation of the flat tax as part of their economic plans.
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