This entire incident is why we need a flat tax.
No accountants. It can be somewhat adjusted based on income, but everyone fucking pays something.
That's one of those things that sounds great and fair on paper, but when you think about it, would be unfair in that it would hurt the poor and middle class more than the rich that it's supposed to be targeting in the name of "Fairness". Because if you sit down to think through the numbers, taking 8% of everyone's income impacts the purchase power of your lower-income brackets more drastically.
Like, if I have $100, 8% of it gone leaves me with $92... that doesn't sound bad, but, think about what you can buy with a fresh hundee in your pocket versus having just a bit less, that's a make-or-break threshold for a lot of things.
Now, consider the guy with $10,000.... 8% of that gone leaves him with $9,200. The drop in money by percentile is the same, but, going from five figures to four doesn't close off your financial options as much as crossing from three digits to two.
Having $88,000 instead of $100,000? It may affect the ability to buy luxuries or cap some investments below where they'd make the most return, but that guy isn't going to hurt for covering basic necessities. However, saying you have $88 vs $100 to a regular working person will have immediate effects on the grocery budget, suddenly that one measly extra box of whatever or better-cut of meat is out of reach. Or that repair bill on the car may now not leave the $20 behind for gas in the budget too. See how it sneaks up on you?
The loss of discretionary buying power is more acutely felt by those with less when taxes go up. A flat tax is something that will disproportionately hurt poor people, but not be even noticed by the wealthy. That's why taxes are graduated in brackets, paying the same % across the board expressed in dollars is not the same as paying the same % across the board in terms of your
potential total income.
Also, a huge chunk of taxes are paid by a small % of wealthy payers, reducing the rates to a single-digit flat tax would immediately cause major shortfalls. Now, if you're not a fan of Government or taxes, and I'm certainly not, that's not a bad thing
per se. But, as we stand now, until we wean ourselves off the bloated gibs machine, nobody in government is going to seriously CONSIDER the flat tax, or much tax reform, because they know it would, overnight, cost half the revenue, and nobody in the bureaucracy wants to tighten their belt.
So, not only is one-rate-for-all not really fair, but the system as it stands now, addicted to tax revenue, would talk a nice game about it, but never seriously consider it since they can tax the highest brackets at 80%, and not really have anyone except the super-wealthy mad at them, and having the wealthy upset at their tax rates has been accepted as a moral imperative of progressive government for a long time. And that's another reason why it won't change, the wealthy would WELCOME flat tax rates, it'd immediately cut their obligations, and happy rich taxpayers are bad optics for the left.
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