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Mike Gravel on Tax Reform
Libertarian for President; Former Dem. Senator (AK); withdrew from Presidential primary July 2019
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Automatic return-free tax system by online IRS filing option
The tax prep industry consistently fights for tax filing to be difficult, confusing, and overwhelming, and they've been profiting off of every instance of someone handing the reins over just to not have to deal with this mess of a system.
Through legislation like the one Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced in 2017, an automatic tax system could benefit almost all Americans. The United States should: - Have the IRS create a free online tax prep and filing program similar to
TurboTax or others, ensuring that almost no one has to pay to file their taxes.
- Ban the IRS from collaborating with tax filing companies as they do right now, abolishing the corporatized Free File program that less than 3% of the population uses.
- Establish a "return-free" filing option to allow millions of Americans with a straightforward tax situation to choose a pre-prepared, simple filing process that comes with their tax return already calculated and immediately redeemed.
Source: 2020 Presidential campaign website MikeGravel.com
, Apr 9, 2019
Progressive tax: 60% at $1 million, and up from there
The American tax system should be reformed so as to be significantly more progressive; it is fundamentally unfair for working-class people to be paying a burdensome amount in taxes while wealthy people benefit from tax cuts.The United States should:
- Repatriate all wealth currently residing in off-shore tax havens and that are therefore avoiding taxation, with a one-time tax rate of 24 per cent.
- Institute a tax on all financial transactions--a
Tobin spot tax--on all speculative financial transactions, including but not limited to foreign exchange trading.
- Marginal tax of all income over $1 million at 60 percent, incomes over $5 million at 70 percent, incomes over $10 million at 80
percent, and incomes over $20 million at 95 percent.
- Raise the capital gains tax.
- Explore a progressive tax on initial public offerings, to increase as the size of the IPO increases.
- Eliminate tax expenditures that benefit the wealthy.
Source: 2020 Presidential campaign website MikeGravel.com
, Apr 9, 2019
Eliminate income tax so the wealthy can’t “game” the system
Gravel has another controversial proposal: to eliminate the income tax and fund the government solely through sales taxes. While appealing, again, to libertarians, the proposal is bound to alienate liberals who might otherwise sympathize with the
ex-senator: Sales taxes are considered “regressive,” meaning they take proportionately more from those with lower incomes than from the better-off.
But Gravel maintains that since the present tax system has become corrupted by “wealthy people gaming the system,” his fix would provide a solution; to help the poor, he’d provide a guaranteed
minimum income, distributed through Social Security. Getting rid of the income tax was until fairly recently a topic relegated to the far right wing.
Source: The Contenders, by Laura Flanders, p.197
, Nov 11, 2007
I advocate a FairTax: pay as you spend
On the Fair Tax: "The biggest problem we have domestically is our tax system. Under the current system, if you're poor and have no income, you get nothing. Average people carry the load, and the poor are unattended. So, I advocate a Fair Tax.
What we'll do under this plan is send you a check every month for the sales tax that you will pay on the essentials of life. This will protect the poor.
It will cover their basic expenses. The rest of us will pay as we spend. The more you spend, the more you pay. If you don't want to pay, don't spend.
So, this will create a cash flow to the poor, not only to the average citizen."
Source: National Review magazine on 2020 presidential hopefuls
, Aug 1, 2007
Tax code is corrupt & serves the wealthy
The tax code stands that high and there’s not a human being alive that understands it. Do you think it’s accident that all of a sudden we wake up & the wealthy aren’t paying a fair share? The only way they’re going to pay a fair share is wipe out the
income tax--it is corrupt, it’s corrupting our society--and begin to put in place a tax that everybody will know what everybody’s paying, and that’s a retail sales tax. You can make it progressive. A tax where everybody will know what everybody is paying
Source: 2007 Democratic Primary Debate at Howard University
, Jun 28, 2007
Wipe out the income tax! -- it’s regressive
We ought to wipe out the income tax, wipe it out! It’s the most regressive, unfair system of taxation in the world, and it’s what’s causing us to lose our jobs. It brought about the Rust Belt. Now, what kind of a tax should we have? The most important
thing a government can do is raise revenue. Now, if it raises unfairly -- which is what we’re doing -- the people intuitively know in their gut that the government’s going to be unfair in all of the programs that deals with the people.
Now, what kind
of a tax should we do? I’m for the Fair Tax. You’ll hear liberals say, “Well, that’s a sales tax, that’s regressive.” That is not regressive. Both systems of taxation, that is the income tax and the sales tax, are both progressive. Whatever you make, you
pay a tax on. If you make more, you pay more tax. With respect to consumption, sales tax, whatever you spend, if you spend more, you pay more tax. So now they’re both the same. The income tax has been gamed by the wealthy people with 30,000 lobbyists.
Source: 2007 AFSCME Democratic primary debate in Carson City Nevada
, Feb 21, 2007
National sales tax; no exceptions; prebates for essentials
The income tax has been gamed by the wealthy people. I for the Fair Tax [national sales tax]. The essentials of life that we have -- food, lodging, medicine, what have you -- we can deal with that. We can’t provide an exception.
When you go to the grocery store, you’ll pay the tax on it. Because if you start giving an exception, then Katy bar the door, the wealthy will game the system again. But what we can do is create a prebate.
Determine what the average cost of essential is to average American, and then turn it around and multiply that by the tax, take the amount of tax, divide it by 12, and send every single registered American a check at the beginning of the month to
cover what he would pay in the way of taxes on the essentials of life. Now that creates a cash flow, and then you go get your paycheck, and there’s no tax deductions at the federal level.
Source: 2007 AFSCME Democratic primary debate in Carson City Nevada
, Feb 21, 2007
Supports a national sales tax to replace IRS
Gravel’s campaign is based primarily on his ardent support for direct democracy (the National Initiative), but also emphasizes his support for a national sales tax and abolition of the IRS,
immediate withdrawal from the war in Iraq, a single-payer national health care system, and term limits during his campaign.
Source: Wikipedia.org article, “Mike Gravel”
, Jan 1, 2007
Repeal the income tax and close down the IRS
The Gravel Agenda: When elected President by the American people, I will:- Repeal the income tax and closing down the IRS replacing it with a Fair Tax (a national sales tax with a pre-bate for necessities)
that will reverse the flight of jobs and capital abroad while balancing the budget;
- Fund education as the top priority it must be in a democracy.
Source: 2008 Presidential campaign website, gravel2008.us, “Issues”
, Dec 25, 2006
Tax system unfairness only superceded by incomprehensibility
The Fair Tax: Describing the current tax system as one whose “unfairness is only superceded by its incomprehensibility” the senator promised
to place before the people “a straightforward national sales tax with proper consideration for the necessities of life through a pre-bate.”
Source: Press release “Announces Run for President”
, Apr 17, 2006
Less regressive tax on poor; more capital gains on rich
The inequities of today’s tax system rob the lower & middle income citizens, while favoring the rich & supporting huge corporations, whose owners are taxed at only a fraction of what they should pay. People with annual earnings below $2,000 pay about 40%
of their income in taxes of all kinds. People earning below $50,000 pay about 30%. Only for persons earning over $50,000 does the effective tax rate begin to rise, but even then only to 45%. We find the burden of taxes falling just as heavily on the poor
as on the well-to-do, partly because everybody has to pay state, local & federal taxes that tend to be highly regressive--sales, gasoline, personal property, real estate, & social security taxes--and partly because of the loopholes built into the present
federal income tax system.The largest loophole is the break given the rich who have capital gains income. Today such income is taxed at a much lower rate than earned income. Capital gains should be treated as ordinary income & taxed accordingly.
Source: Citizen Power, by Sen. Mike Gravel, p.131
, Jan 1, 1972
Page last updated: Dec 15, 2019