RESOLVED, The United States should abandon the current tax system and adopt a flat tax rate of 10%

1) "The US goes bankrupt" http://en.wikipedia.org... The US government takes in 2.6 trillion dollars from taxes (98% from taxes). Most from Income taxes and large additional chunks from corporate. Assuming your ten percent is income and corporate (some advocates of flat taxes insist on only income to avoid double taxation) then because the bulk of that is paid at a rate of 35-33% you'd be cutting the tax take home of the government to about 1/3rd. But, let's just say half for the sake of calculations. That means the government is going to take in 1.3 trillion. Assuming ofcourse that there are still social security and corporate taxes. The spending in 2008 was 2.9 trillion with an additional .6 trillion for the wars. So the 1 trillion dollar deficit will instantly increase to 2.3 trillion dollar drain. If we shut down the government for the most part we could drop that to a 400 billion dollar deficit with a complete cut of all discretionary spending (lowering us to the 1.78 trillion of mandatory spending) and closing down (the department of defense, education, urban development, homeland security, energy etc.). This is on top of the 10 trillion dollar hole we are already in. We'd be bankrupt. ---- The Reagan years were marked with the end of the recession and a massive increase in spending which tripled the national debt. It started the ballooning of the national debt. Kennedy's cuts came at a time of growth as well. However, Clinton's tax hikes came at a time of growth too and the revenues also skyrocketed. Whereas Bush's massive tax cuts came at a time of growth and the economy tanked and all of the surpluses turned to deficits. And oddly, he did the same thing Reagan did. It's almost like there's no pattern at all. The fact that a low tax rate brings in shell companies doesn't mean there's jobs there. It means there's a P.O. Box there and a lot of money on paper being taxed there to avoid paying taxes. It isn't a massive influx of business, it's a scam that the US hasn't done away with. The vast majority of people can take a standard deduction and enter their W-2s. You don't get in trouble for misunderstanding the tax code, you really have to be a jerk or obviously intending to defraud them to get any trouble at all. Your claim that if you lower the tax rates then tax cheats will stop cheating the system. I have another idea, let's make it so they can't cheat the system anyway. Sure you can cheat the system to save yourself 3 million dollars, but it's not worth it for 1 million. There's no actual evidence that tax cheats cheat less at lower tax rates. There's every indicator that the tax rate and GDP have everything to do with tax revenues. The tax cuts you suggest happened during times of economic uptick when the revenues were going up. However, right now we're in a pretty bad recession (though hopefully at rock bottom now). "The economic booms were unrelated? ...my opponent says that when Clinton raised taxes on the rich there was a surplus. But this simply does not have the backing of a pattern like my point does, for example George Bush passed a record number of tax cuts and still did not have a surplus." You first question my claims that the economic booms were not caused by the tax cuts (in some case the tax cuts were caused by the booms, we tend to lower taxes when we can). Then you note that the Clinton tax increase and surplus and Bush tax cut and deficit don't fit your suggested pattern. Ofcourse they don't fit your "pattern", there is no pattern. Tax cuts don't lead to increased revenues. "There are other companies besides American ones who can invest in America." The US economy is larger than most of the rest of the G8. With the exception of China and Japan there aren't that many large multinational non-American companies. And those in China and Japan are already here! Oh, and what is Japan's corporate tax rate? 30%. -- In short, 10% will collapse the government, the government is the largest employer and will dutifully collapse the economy that is, at present, almost stabilized. The tax code isn't that hard to follow and doesn't require a lawyer. Most small businesses do perfectly fine filing their own taxes. Taxes are hard to figure out so let's bankrupt the US government. -- Most of my argument thus far has been pointing out that the number you gave is too low. Let's not rest on just that. You are also proposing a huge tax hike on the poor. The poor in this country at present make less than $20,000 a year, and you will be directly taxing them $2,000 dollars. At present they pay less than nothing. Not only do they have no tax burden but they often collect the EIC and other credits. You will be wiping that out and forcing them to pay 10% of their income to the government. This is a massive tax hike to the people who can afford it the least. While at the same time you'll be giving a massive 25% tax cut to the superrich. So the Bill Gates of this country gets billions of dollar of tax cuts while the average Joe living paycheck to paycheck is going to be hit the hardest. -- Massive tax cut to the superrich, massive tax increase on the poor, and you bankrupt the country.