Because basic living costs money. Also your math is bad. Your examples reflect a 1% tax rate, not 10%. I’m assuming you picked $15k as a number because that’s full time at federal minimum wage. Imagine paying for a month of rent, utilities, groceries, car payment, gas, insurance, and anything else that’s necessary with only $1250, and then you still owe $1500 in taxes for the year. Hopefully that’s the combined state and federal taxes and not just federal, but there’s still sales tax to worry about.
On the other hand, 10% of a billion dollars is $100,000,000. Taking that amount from a billionaire leaves them with only $900,000,000. How on Earth can they be expected to make ends meet?! /s. The reality is that survival has a high floor, but many Americans live in the metaphorical basement (and in many cases a literal basement). There’s virtually no difference between having $1B and $900M, but there’s a massive difference between having $15k and $13.5k, and that difference means having sleep for dinner every other night. Show me a billionaire who has to choose between eating and having electricity, and then we’ll talk about flat tax rates.
Because basic living costs money. Also your math is bad. Your examples reflect a 1% tax rate, not 10%. I’m assuming you picked $15k as a number because that’s full time at federal minimum wage. Imagine paying for a month of rent, utilities, groceries, car payment, gas, insurance, and anything else that’s necessary with only $1250, and then you still owe $1500 in taxes for the year. Hopefully that’s the combined state and federal taxes and not just federal, but there’s still sales tax to worry about.
On the other hand, 10% of a billion dollars is $100,000,000. Taking that amount from a billionaire leaves them with only $900,000,000. How on Earth can they be expected to make ends meet?! /s. The reality is that survival has a high floor, but many Americans live in the metaphorical basement (and in many cases a literal basement). There’s virtually no difference between having $1B and $900M, but there’s a massive difference between having $15k and $13.5k, and that difference means having sleep for dinner every other night. Show me a billionaire who has to choose between eating and having electricity, and then we’ll talk about flat tax rates.