Steve Forbes Quotes
And it would be fair. Everyone will pay the same tax and it will eliminate tax cheaters and corporate shenanigans.
Forbes, Steve. Flat Tax Revolution: Using a Postcard to Abolish the IRS. Regnery Publishing, 2005, p. 12.
Throughout most of the world, the rich and the aristocrats have been able to reduce or eliminate their tax obligations with the burden falling more heavily on the common people. Progressive taxation was thought to be a solution, but even in the United States by the 21st century many huge corporations paid little or no taxes while there was a heavy tax burden on small companies. Rich people generally paid a smaller percentage of their income than middle class people.
Two decades later, in 2011, the fact that the very wealthy often paid tax at a much lower rate than the middle class and even some working poor became a major political issue.
As a result of years of lobbying many vested interests were getting tax exemptions for their activities. Some of the richest corporations and people paid little or no taxes. This was like the old European monarchies where the dukes and nobles got tax exemptions from the king and the middle class and poor people paid a much larger percentage of their income and wealth than did the nobility. Fairness in taxation is very difficult in practice. See {633629}
Corporate and business taxes were anathema to Republicans in 1899 as they were a century later. Roosevelt shocked the Republican base with statements like this, and when he implemented them, he became the most popular politician in America—possibly even more so than George Washington.
Even on Medieval days in Europe, the wealthy barons paid lower tax rates that their lowest peasants. Relief from taxes was one of the privileges of the very rich. The practice has been made more cosmetic, but the result seems to have been the same into the 21st century.
Malcolm Stevenson "Steve" Forbes Jr. is an American publishing executive and politician. Forbes was a candidate in the 1996 and 2000 Republican presidential primaries. Forbes is the Editor-in-Chief of Forbes, a business magazine. Forbes is the son of longtime Forbes publisher Malcolm Forbes, and the grandson of that publication's founder, B.C. Forbes. He is an adviser at the Forbes School of Business & Technology.
