Ask HN: Opinions on a novel and respectful tax system
Just to be clear, I am (recently) very aware of the US tax system and am under no delusion that the ideas stated below will ever be adopted by the US. I am simply looking for opinions about the ideas that I have come up with after thinking critically about taxation and about the stakes held by the various players of our economic system.
We are taxed to fund the activity of our governments (local, state and federal). Taxation is both necessary and helpful, but how can we handle this in a way that is fair and respectful?
From my perspective, we should ask "Who owns the US economy?" The only logical answer is that it is shared among all of its participants. If the government is able to levy taxes against any participant of our economy, should a portion of said taxes not be returned to the citizens of our country.
I would like to propose a system of taxation founded on the idea that we should provide a fair economy to our citizens. This system comes in two parts:
Every transaction would be considered as having two parties, a buyer and a seller. Each would pay a tenth of the monetary value of the transaction as tax; the seller's 10% would go to the federal government while the buyers 10% would be split evenly between the state and local governments.
A 10% tax would then be levied against each applicable level of government and split evenly. This would mean that 10% of the taxes collected by the local, state and federal government would be split evenly based on residency. So each year (or month, or day) everyone would receive their share of the taxes collected by their respective levels of government.
Thank you for taking the time to look and please comment below.