You can if the power you are given is entirely superficial. Like Obamacare.

You mean 1997.

To erase the memory of libertarians.

It is possible to be both evil and incompetent. Most dictators actually are.

But it is. The proof is that a majority of Democrats seem to have applied Affirmative Action to the last two Presidential elections, and promoted a man with no leadership skills whatsoever to the white house.

Oh and on top of all of that: if you somehow make absolutely nothing whatsoever, you automatically get about $20 a day to work with, which should at least keep you from either starving or being homeless (pick one, cause it won't cover both).

Oh and for a concrete example, here is that form, the simplified version with the last two lines combined, using the following values for X, Y, and Z:

X = 2, so we're exactly halfway between a flat tax and total communism.
Y = $25,000, which is a mean income of around $50,000 divided by X = 2 above.
Z = $17,500, which is a mean income of around $50,000 times a 35% tax rate.

That mean income and tax rate chosen because they're nice round numbers close to the current actual figures.

So, that said:

Line 1: Enter your gross income.
Line 2: Divide the amount on Line 1 by 2.
Line 3: Subtract $7500 from the amount on Line 2.

If you made $15,000/yr, which is about full time minimum wage ($7.25/hr * 40hr/wk * 52wk/yr = $15,080/yr), you would pay no taxes.

If you made minimum wage working half time (20hr/wk, 52wk/yr) for a total of $7540/yr, you would get a tax credit of $3730, which would mean a whopping $8 or so extra spending money a day. Don't spend it all on one meal.

If you made twice minimum wage full time for about $30,000/yr, you would owe $7500, which would be about $288 or 15% withheld from each biweekly paycheck.

If you made the mean income of $50,000/yr, you would owe $17500, which would be about $673 or 35% withheld from each biweekly paycheck.

If you made twice the mean income, or $100,000/yr, you would owe $42,500, which would be about $1635 or 42.5% withheld from each biweekly paycheck.

If you made a seven-figure income of $1,000,000/yr, you would owe $492,500, for a tax rate of 49.25%.

If you made an eight-figure income of $10,000,000/yr, you would owe $4,992,500, for a tax rate of 49.925%.

If you made a nine-figure income of $100,000,000/yr, you would owe $49,992,500, for a tax rate of 49.9925%.

But nobody would ever pay higher than a 50% tax rate, because we set our X = 2 which means the maximum possible tax rate is 1/2 = 0.5 = 50%.

Citation needed, unless by "influence behavior" you only mean things like stopping people from aggressing upon each other. (For which taxes are a horrible method; would you punish violent criminals just by raising their taxes?)

Why does any government need to influence its people's behavior beyond keeping people from using force to "influence" each other's behavior?

I think a big point of his tax form is that all of that complication is problematic. Any kind of income should count the same and be taxed the same, with no loopholes. If we're going to allow deductions for expenses, any kind of expense should be taxed the same. But what defines an expense, you might ask? I would answer: any trade where you lose capital, like paying for services, but not paying for goods. Likewise, I would define income as any trade where you gain capital, like selling services, but not selling goods.

This would have positive motivational effects as well, as it would encourage the rich to make money by selling off their capital and to spend money by buying labor, thus spurring business ("creating jobs") for the poor who have nothing but their labor services to sell, in turn enabling those poor to buy the capital goods that the rich are selling off, creating a natural, voluntary redistribution of capital from the rich to the poor. It would also allow the poor to deduct their expenses for "services" like rent paid to the rich, for which the poor gain no capital and thus no wealth.

Only very slightly more complex form to allow for progressive taxation:

Line 1: Enter your gross income.
Line 2: Divide the amount on Line 1 by X[1].
Line 3: Subtract Y[2] from the amount on Line 2.
Line 4: Add Z[3] to the amount on Line 3.

If the amount on Line 4 is greater than zero, this is the amount that you owe.
If the amount on Line 4 is less than zero, this is the tax credit you will receive.

[1] This figure controls how progressive the tax is; a smaller X will make it more progressive, a larger X will make it less.
[2] This figure is last year's mean personal income divided by X. Assuming the mean hasn't changed drastically since the previous year, someone making about the mean income this year should thus get about zero on Line 3, while people making above the mean should have positive numbers on Line 3, and people making below the mean should have negative numbers on Line 3.
[3] This is the amount we actually want to tax each person on average; to convert to this from a percentage tax rate, just multiply the mean income by that percentage. People making less than mean will pay less than Z due to their negative Line 3, but people making more than the mean will make up for it due to their positive Line 3, meaning Z is still the average tax per capita. It's possible that people making far less than the mean could get actual positive tax credits in the end, a negative tax, depending on how progressively we crank the value of X, and how high the per capita tax Z is set.

Of course this should actually be simplified a step further by pre-calculating what Z minus Y is, call it W, and making Line 3 "Add W to the amount on Line 2" and you're done. But I spelled it out here for clarity.

As long as you aren't a victim of Tax Identity Fraud. My taxes are rather complex, my wife and I have used TurboTax for years to deal with them, until this year. When we went to file, we go the error "Spouse's Tax Identification Number has already been used". Yes, some idiot had used her SSN to already file before the first week of February.

So we had to file by paper, notify three other agencies, put a hold on her credit, and call the local cops to get a tax refund this year. NEVER tell me that identity theft is a victimless crime.

>Flamebait is about intentionally trolling to insight a response.

>Reading a damn dictionary is not that hard, so stop making up your own definitions for words.

Modded: Ironylicious

(ps. it's spelled "incite" in that context).

The best part of Star Trek for me was when Motorola came out with the StarTac, and I realized that in three generations, science fiction could become science fact.

BTW, since I need to give up my keyboard in the next generation anyway, can anybody recommend a hard plastic flip cover for a Samsung S5?