[geeks] KVM for Sun Sparc Servers with USB keyboards

[Lionel Peterson]

On May 8, 2009, at 3:08 AM, Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com>  
wrote:

> On May 7, 2009, at 18:22 , Phil Stracchino wrote:
>
>> OK, this is the basic idea:  Completely abolish all federal  
>> personal and
>> corporate income taxes, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative
>> minimum, Social Security, Medicare, and self-employment taxes.   
>> Replace
>> the above taxes with a single flat rate national sales tax at 23%  
>> on all
>> NEW goods for personal consumption.  Every month, the government  
>> sends
>> out a "prebate" to every household in the amount of the sales tax on
>> basic necessities up to the federal poverty level.
>
> I think they need to add a few things to that:
>
> - no more property taxes... you already paid for it, it is yours,  
> and cannot be
>  taken away due to "taxes owed"
> - no more double taxation (the used goods without tax is part of that)
>
> I would be happy with either sales tax or a flat tax.
>
> Even if we used a flat tax system, the IRS could be reduced to about  
> 5 people running a computer and some printers.
>
> An fairly bog-standard modern server could probably do everyone's  
> taxes easily if it were reduced to a single percentage with no other  
> rules except maybe a poverty line calculation.
>
> No more errors, audits, etc either.
>
> But sales tax could be done too, but I've read that it can actually  
> be hard to enforce a lot of that, and will encourage people to use  
> black/gray markets to avoid it, and that it is not all that hard to  
> do so.

A high national sales tax would be hard to enforce, and would be  
labeled as unfair to those that spend all their income (or even more  
than their income) on an annual basis. A flat income tax, applied to  
every dollar earned with refunds for the first 'n' dollars would  
likely be viewed as fairer.

What I mean is, rather than tax consumption at, say, 25%, tax income  
at 15% and refund 100% of all taxes charged on the first $50k, then  
50% of all taxes paid on the next $50K - the refunds would be  
automatic, as soon as you either crossed the $50K or $100K threshold,  
or at the end of the tax year.

This would have the desired effect of reducing paperwork, and would  
pass the "fairness test", IMHO - a perso making $100K with a tax  
system as I describe would pay $7,500, a $50,000/yr employee would pay  
nothing in federal taxes, and all taxes witheld would be returned  
immediately at the end of the year ($7,500). Of course you could make  
refunds quarterly or at smaller thresholds (every $12.5K up to $100K)...

Lionel