Aidan,
You've lost me, does anyone else get this ?

Struth, individual, is it really that hard to understand?

If our current progressive tax rates were replaced with a flat tax rate, higher income earners would pay less tax than they do now, and lower income earners would pay more tax than they do now.

I never claimed that lower income earners would pay more tax than higher income earners.

Aidan,

let me try again, The more you earn the more tax you pay, does that register ? So, how do you figure someone who pays $200 Tax is paying less than somone who is paying $20 ?

You said "The comparison wasn't with each other! There is no comparison, the more you earn the more tax you pay ! Do away with all the complexities of progressive tax etc, they have more loopholes than a block of swiss cheese. No negative gearing just make your money & pay your tax like everyone else. The present system is what needs abolishing so that the corruption that goes with it gets abolished also. Unless of course you're one of the tax evaders whom the present system is taylor made for.

Aidan I understand and in truth it is not hard, look you may well have a better idea than I have of how this can happen, but I at least think if those currently not paying tax, not just the international traders but those who pay big time to avoid tax started paying we all may pay less,world trade,much disliked by many, surely one day will need laws about what tax is paid and to who,/if not world trade only makes some country's rich and others poor.

Belly,
The problem is the country where the profit shows up isn't always the country where the value was created, nor the country where the customers are located. There are various ays to mitigate the problem, but I'm not aware of any way that it could be solved completely. However it's not a major reason why some countries are rich and others poor.

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individual
>let me try again, The more you earn the more tax you pay, does that register ?
Of course.

>So, how do you figure someone who pays $200 Tax is paying less than somone who is paying $20 ?

I DON'T
Does that register?
Does it register how much of an idiot you are for thinking I do after I've repeatedly told you I don't?

>There is no comparison, the more you earn the more tax you pay !
Of course there's a comparison because I'm making one.
The comparison I'm making is between the status quo and what you're advocating.

Currently we have a progressive tax system where high income earners pay tax at a higher rate than low income earners. You want them to all pay at the same rate.

You want to give the rich a massive tax cut and the poor a massive tax slug, and you think that just because the rich would still pay a greater amount of tax, it's OK.

But I say it's not OK. There is such a thing as the cost of living, and our taxation system rightly takes that into account.

As for negative gearing, that's a separate issue. We could easily keep our progressive tax system and do away with negative gearing. Personally I don't favour scrapping negative gearing completely, as it encourages investment and delays (not removes) tax liability. (I'm not including the negative gearing tax loophole for subsidiary companies in this; I know some attempt was made to fix that but I do not know how effective the fix was).

I recently read somewhere some figures on tax paid by segment of the population.

From memory but close to the figures.

The top 10% of earners pay 50% of all PAYE tax collected.

The bottom 40% of PAYE tax payers collect more in benefits than they pay in tax, so no tax paid by them.

Kind of negates some of the arguments expressed here.