This is a topic that is not too difficult to figure out. If ten people pay $50 in taxes, the revenue is equal to $500. If twenty people pay $30, the revenue is equal to $600. When taxes are lowered, people have more money to spend and invest, so the economy grows. When this happens, jobs are created and so the tax base grows making more revenue available to the government overall. When taxes are increased, spending and investment is decreased and the economy shrinks or recedes (hence the term recession). A reasonable tax system would never tax anyone higher than at a rate of 20%. I would advocate that a graduated tax system would be the most equitable, since an equal percentage of income affects the standard of living of people of lower income to a much greater extent. The scale that I would advocate would look something like this.
0-20,000–no federal income taxes
21,000-30,000–1%
31,000-40,000–3%
41,000-50,000–4%
51,000-60,000–6%
61,000-100,000–8%
101,000-250,000–10%
251,000-500,000–14%
>500,000–20%
The taxes could be automatically deducted in a similar fashion to social security taxes. A program like this would eliminate the need for the IRS, which would save taxpayers an enormous amount of money and headache each year. There would be no capital gains, estate, or other federal taxes. How then, would the federal government sustain itself? Under a system such as this, the economy and hence, the tax base, would inevitably grow, so the total revenue brought into the federal government would inevitably be larger than under the current system. If you don’t believe this, look at the ‘Methods of Increasing Federal Revenue’ box or read Professor John Taylor’s book.