googled820eff5cc42b044.html A Tale of Two Economies | Lower Taxes
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LOWER TAXES 

Your taxes would be much lower if we stopped taxing income and taxed payments at 0.25% instead.

 Why? Because there are two economies - the material economy and the monetary economy.

We live in the material economy - the production and consumption of goods and services. The size of the material economy is our GDP, about $25 trillion.

There's also the monetary economy - the creation and trading of financial assets, like crypto, stocks, derivatives, MBS, REITs, and PE funds - which generates over $9,000 trillion in untaxed payments each year!

WE'RE SIMPLY TAXING THE WRONG THING!

The volume of payments in the monetary economy from trading financial assets exceeds both the GDP and our collective income by 360-times.

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We are taxing the red dot when we should be taxing the blue sphere!
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The blue sphere represents the payments in the monetary economy.
The red dot is our collective income.

The Fed publishes this information in the BIS Red Book. Click United States in the link below, and look for Tables CTA1 and CTA2.

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Collectively, we earn $22 trillion per year.
There are $9,184 trillion in payments each year.

Taxing Income

We would have to tax our income at a rate of 39% just to balance today's budget.
$8.5 trillion
÷ $22 trillion
 39%
The federal budget and every state and local government budget totals $8.5 trillion.

Taxing Payments

If we taxed payments at a rate of 0.25% it would generate $23 trillion.
 $23 trillion
÷ 9,184 trillion
0.25%
That covers today's budget, plus basic income, child care, free healthcare, and free college.

This is how low your taxes would be if we taxed payments instead of income.

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Remarkably, these taxes are your fair share of the revenue necessary to balance the budget and fund all the benefits on this site. 

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Reduced Taxes
+
More Benefits 

What taxing payments would mean to you

If you're single and earning $30k, your taxes would drop from $6k to just $75 .
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HOW OUR ECONOMY HAS CHANGED

Why a Payments Tax Would Work Today

In 1913, when income taxes were first imposed, income was the right thing to tax. 

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Henry Ford shocked the world when he paid his employees five dollars per day.

We entered an era in which the middle class grew and the gap between the rich and poor narrowed.

Automation changed everything in the 1970s.

Wages have been flat for the last 50 years, while production has continued to increase.
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Automation caused a shift in jobs to the financial sector, which gave rise to unprecedented growth in the monetary economy.

The impact of our burgeoning monetary economy. 

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Unbridled growth in the monetary economy has led to an increase in the disparity of wealth in America.

Share in Aggregate Wealth

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Trillions

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The rapid rise of the monetary economy has also led to the extreme disparity in income in America.

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Income for the top 1% was not included because it did not fit on the chart.

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The disparity in income has led to a greater disparity in the ownership of equities in America. 

Just 20% of Americans control 87% of the equity market in the nation.

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A payments tax is the single most effective tool for mitigating these growing problems. 

HOW A PAYMENTS TAX WOULD WORK

Simple, Less Overhead, No More Tax Returns

A payments tax would entail debiting a very small amount of each and every payment anyone receives. 

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Creating and deleting money.

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The money debited from a payment would not be credited to any account at all.

This would delete the debited money from the money supply.

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Tribute to Dr. Feige
The work of Dr. Edgar Feige, Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, who first proposed the automated payments tax, is a major inspiration behind the solutions on this site.

© 2024 The Foundation for a Better Economy

A tax exempt 501(c)3 foundation

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