From: utzoo!utcsrgv!ubc-visi!mprvaxa!shinbro Newsgroups: can.general Title: Re: Politics in Ontario Article-I.D.: mprvaxa.148 Posted: Wed Feb 9 19:03:58 1983 Received: Thu Feb 10 21:28:09 1983 I would like to point out, in terms of a flat-rate income tax, that 15% of $5,000 a year is far more painful to pay than 15% of $500,000 a year. This is why a tax such as you propose is called a "regressive" tax. I don't intend to give a lecture on the history of income tax (which is not all that old), but if you were just barely making ends meet, I suspect you would resent paying tax at the same rate as a multi-millionaire. There is such a thing as paying too great a penalty for reducing bureaucracy, which I think was the original reason for someone making this proposal on the net. (I might also mention that there would be a significant amount of paperwork involved simply in proving that the declared income is correct. That's the most tedious part of filling out income tax forms anyway, in my opinion. The calculations are easy, once you have collected all the paper in one place.) Mia Shinbrot Microtel Pacific Research Vancouver ...!ubc-vision!mprvaxa!shinbro