Check your math, Viper. 

Already have.  And it's a system supported by several in Congress.

The get the fiscal year budget in line, we need to make up the current ~$1.5 trillion budget deficit.

Freeze on spending keeps that deficit from increasing.   Annual spending is $3.8 trillion.  A 1% reduction would be $38 billion.  5 years = $190 billion.  Down to $3.6 trillion.  Decifit is now ~$1.3 trillion.  2012 projected revenue = $2.62 trillion.  An increase of ~460 billion from 2011.  Given I think that would be a pretty high increase every year, I'll reduce that to $250 billion.  $250 billion x 5 years = $1.25 trillion.   Deficit is now just ~$50 billion.  That can easily be made up with higher revenue in year 4 or 5.  Deficity close and by year 6 we can unfreeze spending AND pay down some debt.

The problem is that taxes on goods and services are highly regressive. The people who can least afford it get hit the hardest by them. They can work though, but if you implement them you have to make sure that the poor can still afford the essentials of life.

Edit: @OP I've noticed in other threads of yours such as the marriage one the same problem as this one. The answers in your poll are ridiculously biased so that people either have to agree with you or (in this case) say that they don't care about the government.

Im guessing a transaction tax. eg All companies must pay 0.5% - 1% tax on every financial transaction they make.

"people would prefer a 1% reduction in spending over 5% increase in taxes."

You should have said 5% reduction in spending vs. 5% increase in taxes.  I thought it was obvious but I guess I should have spelled it out. 

And, that being the case, I am not so sure people's preference would be the slam dunk you claim. 

As someone who has consistently voted in favor of raising my own property taxes to pay for someone else's kids to get an education, at the state level, I'd love to see the department of education take a heavy cut.  They got their funding doubled in order to support "no child left behind" and the result in states that have taken that money and followed their guidelines is even lower test scores and dramatically reduced standards in place to prevent massive drop out rates.  The states that needed the money are now even further behind the ones that did well enough to ignore it.  Also, most of things you list are funded at the state level already.  The federal government's hand in public transportation is keeping a train service that hardly anyone uses in operation at a loss.  The city I live in managed to do something smart and make the bus lines relatively profitable, so we don't need federal money.

Really, we have state taxes for a reason.  They're the ones that actually provide us with most of our services.  Yeah, they can get federal assistence, but our STATES tend to do a bit more of the heavy lifting than your PROVINCES.  For example, my state provided health care for underprivileged minors long before the federal government decided to step in, and my state is not anywhere near the cutting edge in that regard.  Yes, your STATE government goes well above and beyond that for you, but mine is far more conservative and is required to run without a deficit.  Our countries our run on very different systems in a number of regards, despite how similar they seem at first glance.

Now going back to the idea of cutting the DoE and such.  If we cut our spending back to what it was in the long forgotten time of 2004 then we have the debt locked down.  It'd be all about paying it back at that point because current revenues could withstand that level of spending.  If we cut every failed or underperforming program launched since then we're probably half way to nipping this in the bud.  There are just too many money-losing programs run by the federal government.  It's not just DoE doing the opposite of what we expected from it and Amtrak being a money bonfire (which was granted several billion dollars to extend its lines with more trains that barely move faster than cars are legally allowed to travel), it's basically every federal program that exists.  Social Security is paying out 3 times as much as people put in, even though they send me a letter every year saying that when I retire there will be enough for me to get 74% of what I paid in.  Medicare and Medicade are massively bloated because they "don't count" for the federal budget (dear god, our deficit if you add that in...).  We run 11 Air Force bases in France and 10 in England, for what reason?  Even our military is spending like the dollar has no actual value.  Soon it may not.

Seriously, I have a hard time naming more than a small handful of federal programs that should not be cut regardless of our debt.  The post office racket is a constant loser, and we don't even allow anyone to compete legally when it comes to letters sent through the mail (who does that anymore?  Hello, e-mail!).   National Parks, too.  Why can't the people who use them pay for them?  Why do I pay for someone else's vacation when I haven't been able to afford one of my own for years?  There's so much crap that can be cut, so many taxes paying for things that should be up to individuals as well as so many businesses that would be better off privatized (if anyone wanted them).

Yeah, we could raise taxes.  But a VAT would hurt the supply chain.  It'd scare off manufacturers that are already considering moving abroad.  It's cheaper to import an item taxed only once or twice by vat than to make one that will be taxed 4 or 5 times and made by much higher costing labor.  Instead of giving the federal government the go ahead to continue funding programs that often do little or no good, and sometimes even do harm, why not just turn the spending clock back 7 years and demand some accountability from the government?  If they are free to spend as much as they like and never actually have to answer for when the money is wasted, we won't ever fix our debt problem.  A new tax is an excuse to maintain excessive spending and even increase the budget even further.

Let's face it, when you're at the wheel of the world's sole super-power you tend to believe you don't have to answer to anyone because no one has realy forced you to.  Government spending is out of control because no one ever made them spend responsibly.  If we throw more money at them, they won't learn anything other than the fact that they are, in fact, justified in doing the wrong thing.  Trust me on this.  The reason why Social Security won't even pay me back what I put in isn't because of how much it gives to recipients today, it's because the program has been plundered by the federal government for decades and they have no way to give back what they took away for programs they coun't afford otherwise.  Even the "balanced" budget we had under Clinton was taking money directly out of Social Security to pay the bills.  If we hand them money, they will spend it.  They always have and they don't show any intention of changing now.

Oh, and that IS the tl;dr version.  If you're too lazy to read it you're too ill-informed to speak on the US government.  Everything in my post, biased by my own opinion though they may be, can be backed up by fact.

Considering how many polls I have made two doesn't mean much. However I will say I am a very political person and do at times put bias in my polls which I maybe should be more careful to avoid. Usually and in these two cases the polls and threads were inspired by another post in a different thread. Sometimes I create the threads in response to another users statments.

Anyways sorry if the polls might sometimes contain bias.

In this case I just talked to an American who said the deficit was the Governments problem and that they shouldn't raise taxes or do anything that would impact peoples lives. He was like let them fix their own problems. Thus when writing this thread I mentioned not caring about Government.

Similar to how it works in Michigan i'd think... but without the property and payroll restirctions.

http://www.michigan.gov/taxes/0,1607,7-238-43533-154440--,00.html

Granted Michigan isn't exactly tops when it comes to state economies, but I don't think it's related to the Single Buisness Tax.

As for Income taxes, not really against, them, but they don't really do what they mean to do either.  Not only would I simplfy them, i'd try and find a forumla to make them more equitable without moving into "Wealth tax" territory since wealth taxes tend to have negative effects.

I mean, the point of an income tax is supposed to be more "fair" drawing revenue wise based on what you earn, but a lot of people earn a lot, then almost nothing later on.  Like say your average NFL player who plays 3.5 years, makes a few hundred thousand dollars a year, then is out and working a lower paying job because he didn't finish college, or if he did probably majored in something useless/had a bad grade average.

Perhaps have higher "base" level taxations, but if your average lifetime salary is lower then the level your at now, you pay the lower level number.

Would theoretically help people who should have less money, build up more wealth.

The way income taxes are now, it's a half assed attempt at something.  If your going to do someting, you may as well do it right.

I see.  I wondered at the time if they just put a sales tax on stuff businesses did, but I wasn't sure that it could be pinned down that easily. 

Wouldn't your plan mean the football player is taxed even MORE for his (early) few years of glory? 

And, I mean, it's an interesting idea to try to average it out, but I am not sure it would work out so well.  For instance, isn't it true that people's incomes tend to go up as they get older (even inflation adjusted)?  So the average being lower than the current income would be fairly normal for many many people ... or at least it seems like that would be the case off the top of my head.  So it seems to me that would have a net effect of taxing people much more (than now) at the start of their careers versus at the end, because the taxes would shift away from the latter group, or else you'd lose a whole lot of tax revenue.  Or would that effect not be bad?  I'm just kind of presuming it would be bad, but maybe not. 

Also it would just be much more complicated.  I mean, every year's taxes would basically be calculated on your whole life history.  And wouldn't it also therefore be more vulnerable to fraud? 

Yeah, i'm just trying to spit ball ideas for the second part.  Something i've never been able to figure out.

I'd definitly put in a corproate VAT though.

They don't make sense everywhere, but they definitly make sense in countries like the US where you have a large rich consumer base.

Of course the downside is... that like the VAT (which taxes imports pretty heavily) it hurts developing nations, and smaller developed nations.