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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!wjb
From: wjb@burl.UUCP (Bill Buie)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Flat Tax
Message-ID: <434@burl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 16-Apr-84 13:41:57 EST
Article-I.D.: burl.434
Posted: Mon Apr 16 13:41:57 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 17-Apr-84 08:16:57 EST
Organization: AT&T Technologies; Burlington, NC
Lines: 22

--
I've been reading articles endorsing a simple, flat rate tax that
does away with all artful deductions, and I've generally agreed with
the basic idea.  But a question happened to dawn on me:

Do you really mean to do away with *ALL* deductions?

Consider, for instance, Joe Blow, who is self-employed.  Maybe he
builds widgets in his backyard or hacks software in his garage.  Now
Joe's total volume in sales for a given year are $150,000.  His
expenses, stuff like debt servicing and cash outlays for equipment
and raw materials ran to $127,000.  Under the present setup, Joe
writes off the $127,000 as a business expense, and pays taxes only
on the $23,000 he cleared.  I think that this is quite reasonable. 
Is anybody out there talking about taxing Joe for his total volume
(resulting in a tax larger than his true income)?

You can probably see implications.  Would somebody take this up and
debate it?  I'm learning a lot in this discussion.
-- 

				--Bill Buie