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