A Progressive Tax System Should Be Used Over a Flat Tax System

I will now respond to my opponent's contentions. "1. A flat tax system is more fair. In a flat tax system everyone gets taxed the same percentage." This is an over-simplified view of 'fair.' It is true that in a flat tax system, all income brackets are taxed the same percentage. However, this is unfair to the middle and lower income brackets. It can hardly be called fair for a man who makes $15,000 a year to pay the same rate as a man who makes $1 million a year. Say a flat tax was 20%. Flat taxes generally do not incorporate marginal taxation, and my opponent has not argued that they can or should. So: The man who makes $15,000 now ends up with only $12,000 The man who makes $1 million now ends up with $800,000 Now, by no means should these numbers be equal. This would be a redistribution of wealth. Under a progressive tax system with marginal taxation (and discounting outside factors that further lower the amount paid) the maximum a person who makes $1 million a year would have to pay is $353,763.75, leaving him or her with a profit of $646,236.25 (this is my own calculation based on the data I provided in the previous round). The man who makes $15,000, on the other hand, ends up with $13,259.25. The rich man still has plenty of money, and the poor man now has much more incentive to spend. In the US, the average cost of living for a single person (including housing and transport) is $12,863 [1]. As I showed, under a flat tax system, the man who makes $15,000 can barely make ends meet, as he ends up with $12,000. He is not encouraged to spend at all, and his money does not enter the economy and affect supply and demand but remains in his wallet. Consumers like this man play a major role in driving the economy through consumption, and a progressive tax system encourages them to do so. I will now address my opponent's second contention. "2. A flat tax system is better for the economy. It is those rich upper class people who hire people. If the upper class is taxed a greater percentage than the middle and lower class; then they won't be able to hire as many people; they won't be able to afford it. If all classes are taxed the same percentage then more people will be hired." My opponent's assertion hinges on the idea that it is the rich upper class who hire people. Even if we assume this is always true, under a progressive tax system, the rich still have plenty of money and thus plenty of incentives to continue hiring people. The rich upper class still have almost $650,000 in profit under the US progressive tax system, and this factors out other impacts on how much they pay (such as 401k accounts). The average rich person actually keeps much more money than this. In the previous round, I demonstrated how income inequality is growing and the richest Americans continue to grow richer despite the progressive tax. Thus the progressive tax is not impairing their ability to make money. Additionally, my opponent asserts that the rich create jobs and hire people, yet he provides no evidence for this (or his other claims). Multimillionaire Henry Bloch stated "rich people don't create jobs. Companies create jobs" [2]. Additionally, billionaire Warren Buffet has also called for higher taxes on the rich [2], falling in line with progressive tax theory. Furthermore, there are many articles and studies demonstrating that giving tax cuts to the rich does not create jobs [3, 4], putting another hole in my opponent's assertion. I look forward to my opponent's response! [1] http://opensourceecology.org...[2] http://thinkprogress.org... [3] http://www.forbes.com...[4] http://www.addictinginfo.org...