seriously...

I never understood how the tax brackets worked. There should just be a flat rate, that way no one can whine about it being unfair.

Tax brackets are easy.  It's just the deductions that are hard.

I mean, say you make 300 with a 5, 10 and 20 % Tax rate and the thresholds are  100-200-higher.

You would pay 5% on your first $100.  So $5.

Then on your second hundred you would pay 10%, so from 100 to 200 $10.

From 200 to 300 you would pay $20.

So tota l you'd pay 35 bucks on your $300 tax and would be in the 20% bracket... though in reality your effective tax rate is 11.6%

Would food and clothing be exempt from this? Otherwise this could be a horribly cruel tax on the poor.

You can add that as part of the test to see if someone is liberal or conservative.  If they start to make fun of rich who don't want to see their taxes go up, they get qualified as liberal and their taxes go up.  If you worship the ground the rich walk on, you get classified as conservative and have your taxes cut.  It can be part of the system of taxes based upon ideological beliefs.

No, the more money you make the more you will spend and the more taxes you will pay. They are not exempt just because they are part of a company because whoever buys the product will have to pay taxes. There is no way around that.

No, nothing is exempt from being taxed. If they did this to one product it would be an unfair advantage and lobbyist would start trying to get their products tax free as well. Although they say 23% sales tax rate you have to make a certain amount of money before you actually pay that rate.

"The FairTax replaces the federal income and payroll tax system with a national retail sales tax plus a prebate which makes spending up to the poverty level tax free. This means that those living at the poverty level will pay a FairTax rate of zero percent. A person spending twice the poverty level would pay a spending tax rate of 11.5 percent; a person spending three times the poverty level would pay an effective rate of 17.3 percent, and so on."

You can read more about it here: http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer

Sounds fair enough, but I need to add an extra part to it all.

Conservatives demand cuts in spending, too. So here's my idea: conservatives pay far less tax... but they don't get to have anything spent on them. They don't get to use public roads or rail (either personally or in terms of their company). They are not allowed in public hospitals or hospitals in any way supported by the government. Their children are not allowed to attend public schools, or private schools that are in any way supported by the government. They aren't allowed to use banks that in any way interact with the Federal Reserve Bank (nor with banks that DO interact with the Federal Reserve Bank). If someone steals from their house, they aren't allowed to call the police. If their house catches fire, they aren't allowed to call the firefighters. They aren't allowed to watch TV other than cable. They aren't allowed to vote. If they find themselves somewhere else in the world and in some sort of trouble, they aren't allowed any sort of consular assistance.

They aren't allowed to buy cars from any company "bailed out" by the government. They don't get to attend any publicly-funded location, such as museums. Their company cannot apply for government grants or contracts. If public funding is used to create or discover something, that is not allowed to be used by conservatives - this includes The Internet, a variety of drugs, etc.

If poor, they don't get access to public social security. If they find themselves disabled, they don't get access to disability support. They don't get to buy any product supported by a government subsidy. They don't get to use the public postal system, the public telephone system (as in, the publicly-built communications infrastructure), the public water services (again, infrastructure, not supply), the public electricity grid (infrastructure again), the public waste disposal services.

They are, however, still subject to laws. And they still get protected inherently by the military, and the economic benefits of government spending will still flow on to them, so it's not zero tax, still - a flat 10% would seem appropriate - I'd go with a flat amount rather than a flat rate, but then poor conservatives would complain, and we wouldn't want to upset such blinkered individuals.

With all of that happening, I'm quite confident that Jon Stewart, and Warren Buffet, and other such "rich liberals", would quite happily pay far more in tax.

If people think that the government is so great at welfare and want to have more of it, they can always choose to give more to the government. For all the people that want to raise taxes why don't they take the initiative and do just that? It would really show that they believe in the government. Have jon stewart or warren buffet donated any money to the government yet? how much of their income did they donate? how much have other liberals donated? Or do they donate to a charity that is better at welfare than the government?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/9034015/Warren-Buffett-pledges-15pc-of-income-to-US-if-10pc-of-Congress-does-too.html

So he only cares to force others to do so? Why not just donate the 15% of his income instead of trying to force others to do so. If he truely believed the US government was the best spot for welfare he should step up and donate to it. No "strings" attached, this is charity we're talking about, not bl;ackmailing others to do what you won't. He should lead by example.