I Wonder If Anyone Argued For a “Flat Sacrifice System”?
As one who believes a progressive tax system, and not a flat tax, is what is fair, I find this passage from Theodoret of Cyrus, discussing the sacrificial system in Israel, relevant:
Now, because some were affluent while others were living in poverty, he bade the former a calf, lamb, or a goat, the latter two turtle-doves or two young pigeons, and the poorest a little fine flour mixed with oil. As you can see, he required offerings commensurate with one’s wealth. –Theodoret of Cyrus, The Questions on the Octateuch: Volume 2. trans. Robert C Hill (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2007), 5.
The social teaching of the Church, which promotes the preferential option for the poor, is the teaching we find throughout the whole of Scripture. The poor are the constant concern of God. The prophets spoke out against the kings and priests of Israel when they neglected the needs of the poor, or worse, burdened them with the desires of the state. Ancient Israel, like many modern states, believed its strength lay in the acquisition of arms and military treaties with their neighbors (such as Egypt). The infidelity was two-fold; it showed a lack of trust in God’s providence, but also, the treaties required Israel to collect tributes to give to their allies, tributes which ultimately burdened the poor and needy that Israel was supposed to care for. Is it not the same with the United States today, where our military might far outweighs any other tax use, and we now see people wanting a “flat tax” to promote this military state?
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Oh, come now, Henry! You know that “progressive” is code for “socialist” (when it’s not code for “fascist”), and that “poor” is code for “lazy,” and that “empathy is next to larceny,” and that there is a very real existential threat to the land of the free and the home of the brave posed by people who “depend on ‘handouts’ rather than WORK, BUILD and CREATE for themselves.” The key word there, Henry, is “themselves.” As in “I’ve got mine” and “You’ve got yours” and that’s how God (a good American!) wants it. If people want to demand the privilege of being poor in America, they must be prepared to PAY FOR IT!
I was a supporter of Jerry Brown and his flat tax back in the ’92 Democratic primary. Jerry Brown was a disciple of Ivan Ilich and E.F. Schumacher.
I’m not clear from the post if you’re taking this into account, but the idea of the “flat tax” is not that everyone would pay exactly the same amount, but rather that everyone would pay the same percentage of their income. (In reality, all the flat tax proposals I’ve seen also include and exclusion for basic living expenses, so they’re effectively progressive.)
Thus, someone who makes four times as much money would pay four times as much in taxes — something that does not sound out of keeping with what Theodoret of Cyrus describes.
Thus if there was a “flat tax” of 10% with no exclusions (as I say, all actual proposals include some exemptions for basic living expenses) someone who make 40k would pay $4000 while someone making a million a year would pay $100,000.
The difference with a progressive tax is that while the person making 40k, might pay a 10% tax, a person making a million would pay a 35% tax. Thus, the person making 40k would still pay $4,000, but the person making a million would pay $350,000.
Either way, the rich pay more than the poor, it’s just a question of whether they pay more strictly in proportion to how much richer they are, or in magnified proportion.
DC
A person who makes only $500 a year and pays $50 is far more affected by the taxes than someone who makes 500,000 and pays 50,000. The whole flat tax is unfair because it puts the burden upon the poor, which is exactly what Theodoret says God works against. The point of progressive tax is to take into consideration the burden, which flat tax ignores out of greed.
Darwin, you are confusing average and marginal tax rates. If the top rate of tax is 35 percent, the person is most certainly not paying 35 percent on his first dollar.
Anyway, I believe the social teaching of the Church does embrace progressive taxation. Remember, Pope John XXIII wrote that “the economic prosperity of a nation is not so much its total assets in terms of wealth and property, as the equitable division and distribution of this wealth”.
A person who makes only $500 a year and pays $50 is far more affected by the taxes than someone who makes 500,000 and pays 50,000. The whole flat tax is unfair because it puts the burden upon the poor, which is exactly what Theodoret says God works against.
True. But then, I’m sure that the poor are much more affected by sacrificing two doves than the rich are by sacrificing a goat or a calf. It works either way.
And as I pointed out, all actual flat tax proposals put forward have included a basic deduction which excludes a minimum level of income from taxation — thus relieving the poor of responsibility for paying at all.
I’m not particularly a flat tax advocate, since I doubt it is likely to ever happen, but I suspect your are incorrect in attributing the attraction to greed. I think most people like it because they hate the complexity of the tax code, and the feeling that after filling out twenty pages of tax forms they may have inadvertently done something wrong which they will be punished for years down the road.
Yes, MM, I was intentionally simplifying. My only point was to clear up the apparent confusion that a “flat tax” involves everyone paying the same amount regardless of means — which it clearly doesn’t.
As for CST: it clearly mandates that the rich be held more responsible for paying for the expenses of society than the poor, but since this is accomplished either way it’s not clear to me that it comes down decisively either way.
The advantages of a flat tax lie not in its fairness but in its simplicity and efficiency (i.e. it costs less to collect/comply with a flat tax and the deadweight loss is lower). Whether these advantages outweigh the lack of progressivity in a particular case is a matter of judgement.
The complexity of administration of the tax code comes not from progressive rates (which take just a couple of tables of the code) but in defining what is and is not income, a Sisyphean task because inventive tax-evaders constantly create new gimmicks to de-characterize income, as it were.
“And as I pointed out, all actual flat tax proposals put forward have included a basic deduction which excludes a minimum level of income from taxation — thus relieving the poor of responsibility for paying at all. ”
So in other words. . . they are not flat taxes, but progressive taxes. With two brackets 0% for the poor, and some non-zero percent for the non-poor.
That’s progressive.
“The advantages of a flat tax lie not in its fairness but in its simplicity and efficiency (i.e. it costs less to collect/comply with a flat tax and the deadweight loss is lower). Whether these advantages outweigh the lack of progressivity in a particular case is a matter of judgement.”
Simplicity is a red herring, no? The complexity is not a result of more than one tax bracket, but of various deductions applied to different sources of income.
The “simplicity and efficiency” is a misnomer. A huge one. I could design an equally simple progressive tax system that would add only a couple of lines to the tax code.
In theory a progressive tax could be nearly as simple as a flat tax (though this wouldn’t deal with the deadweight loss problem). In practice, not so much.
All taxation schemes have some dead-weight loss issues.