From: "John Beamish" 

I don't know the US tax system, but earned income, interest income and
dividend income (with two subsets:  Canadian corporations and non-Canadian
corporations) are all taxed at different rates here.

Quite a few years ago there was a major study that looked at this very
issue (among a host of related tax issues) and their starting point was:  a
dollar of income is a dollar of income.

But, as was pointed out elsewhere in this thread, simple "flat
taxes" (and related "flat" schemes) deny the Government the
ability to punish/protect different groups in society.

I have a strong dislike for Sales Taxes:  they are, inherently, punitive on
lower incomes (though, I must add that in Ontario there is a mechanism in
the tax system to apply non-refundable credits to lower-income earners at
tax time.

A non-refundable credit allows you to reduce the income tax payable but it
doesn't allow you to get into a negative position where the government
would send you a refund cheque.  Assume you calculate that you owe $100 in
income tax but have non-refundable tax credits of $125.  Your actual tax
owing is
$0; you do not get a refund.  Assume, again, you owe $100 in income taxes
but have regular deductions that give you a credit of $125.  Your actual
tax owing is -$25 and you get a refund cheque.


"Geo."  wrote in message
news:40728205$2{at}w3.nls.net...
> Why do you have to treat any of those differently? Do you pay a different
> sales tax rate depending on how you earned the money?
>
> Geo.
>
> "John Beamish"  wrote in message
> news:40722eca{at}w3.nls.net...
> > Ain't gonna happen.
> >
> > How do you treat capital gains from stocks?  from selling a house?
> >
> > Do you treat earned income, interest income, dividend income the same?
> >
> > Do you treat the first dollar the same as the last dollar?  Do you allow
> > income splitting?
> >
> > How do you treat foreign income with tax already deducted?  Suppose the
> tax
> > already paid is less than the equivalent tax in the US -- are you going
to
> > rebate the difference or are you going to charge US tax on the remitted
> > portion?
> >
> > There are a lot of things you can say about tax code but 
"simplify it"
is
> > the easiest to say and the hardest to do.
> >
> > "Monte Davis"  wrote in message
> > news:33a470teum1utjhfbr9p2a5jj7i9d86uoo{at}4ax.com...
> > > "Mark"  wrote:
> > >
> > > >They could still build in less complicated breaks to encourage
> > homeownership
> > > >and for other social engineering initiatives i.e. once all the gay
> > marriage
> > > >shit is out of the way and they can marry too, they could do a
combined
> > 18%
> > > >rate for couples and say a 1% cut per kid - unless they
decide there
> are
> > too
> > > >many kids and then cut it for births more than 9 months from the
change
> > etc.
> > > >etc.  just
> > for
> > > >instances>
> > >
> > > I'm all for simplification, but as I've said before I'd go further: NO
> > > tax breaks for social engineering. If Congress wants to encourage X,
> > > subsidize X. We can have all the fights we want over the latter -- but
> > > keeping taxes simple is the best way to convince everyone of their
> > > fairness.
> > >
> > > -Monte
> > >
> >
> >
>
>

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