Our tax system

Re: It just doesn’t make sense 

You are referencing other nations’ tax systems. So far our tax system is not setup is such structure.

Our government is currently trying to pass new tax structures that will make every working person pay tax. Regardless of income. Some call it a flat tax across the board.

The point of the article is really simple. “Create jobs and a system that will register all individual income first.” Hard to collect taxes if the government can’t identify individuals and incomes to assess and collect from.

We do not have enough working people to collect tax from. How do you tax the fisherman selling his catch of the day along Beach Road? or people selling goods at the market?

Last time I checked, none of them are keeping records of sale. Most of our people are creating a market for themselves.

Only businesses can truly collect taxes from its employee for the government. Most family owned business in our country pays family members off the books. If they get paid at all.

Our government is promoting this idea that taxing everybody will help pay for our long term infrastructure maintenance.

But if you can only collect taxes from 20% of your working population, it is impossible to sustain such long term plans. If you can flip that number, not only will the government sustain its plan, they will also improve other sectors of our government and growth.

 

Dallas 

Samoa Observer

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