Flat Tax Essay

Should the United States Incorporate a Flat Tax?

One topic that every single person should be interested in is taxes—because we all are supposed to pay them. Taxes are not exciting, but a lot of work goes in to making “fair” tax brackets. But, what would it be like if we got rid of our current tax brackets and changed it into one single tax rate? First off, let’s briefly talk about our current system. The tax rates for a single income starts as low as 10% for income below $9,325 and ends as high as 39.6% if you make over $418,400. It’s a little complex since there are seven different rates that a taxpayer could fall into. However, in the grand scheme of things it is simple—the more you make, the more you pay. With this tax system the “winners” are the lower income taxpayers, and the “losers” are the higher income taxpayers. But let’s be honest, nobody wins with taxes. While most countries have tax systems that relate to the United States, there are a few countries that are using a flat tax system. This means that everyone pays the same tax rate. Whether it is a 10% tax rate like Mongolia and Kazakhstan, or a 45% tax rate like Greenland, everyone pays the same. With a 10% flat tax rate, if someone makes $10 they pay $1 in taxes, and if someone makes $10,000,000 they pay $1,000,000. Therefore,

If the U.S. were to make the flat tax high then most people’s revenues will go down, and if the U.S were to make the tax rate really low, people’s revenues will go up. However, if the tax rate was low, like 10%, then the government would lose an extremely large amount of money from the higher income taxpayers. Thus, the government’s revenue will go down, and the deficit would go up even more. Like what we learned while talking about the federal government budget, lower taxes sounds good, but will make the government’s deficit go up even more than what it already