We need a complete overhaul of taxation.

It seems those that benefit the most from our country and economy, should have the greatest responsibility to support the system.

1) A Security Transaction Excise Tax:

We pay sales taxes on everything else from food to cars to property, why not on securities purchases? It can be a little as a quarter to a half cent on the dollar.

2) Capital Gains Tax:

At present the capital gains tax is something like five to fifteen percent, which is far less than someone pays on income derived from their labor, which can be thirty nine percent.

There seems to be two different kinds of capital gains. One is dividends, i.e., the profits of a corporation are dispensed to the shareholders. Thus we have individuals that make their money sitting by the pool drinking their martinis waiting for their checks to arrive. These people expect to make money on that which they bestow no labor. Talk about lazy!  

The other type of capital gain is the buying and selling of securities, and the profit made on the transactions. Now I understand the meaning of "investment," that is floating capital to a corporation in return for a cut of the profits. Consider this:

At the end of World War II, the average holding period for a stock was four years. By 2000, it was eight months. By 2008, it was two months. And by 2011, it was 22 seconds, at least according to one professor’s estimate. Scott Patterson, Dark Pools

You can't say you're investing in a company when you hold the stock for a mere twenty two seconds! You're just gaming the system. This is where High Frequency Trading comes in. It's entirely parasitical in nature, and distorts the market.

I'm thinking a fifty to ninety nine percent tax dependent on how long you hold the security, with a decent deduction for retirement accounts.

3) Income Tax, or Tax on Labor:

This still needs to be progressive in nature, but I think we could bring it down to a top rate of twenty five to thirty percent.

4) Tariffs:

I know these are anathema to the globalists out there, but I'm not one of them. The outsourcing of manufacturing to places like China for the last thirty years have decimated the great middle class of our country. Just look at my hometown, Detroit, to see what this has done to America. Detroit was the greatest industrial city in the world when I was growing up there in the fifties and sixties. It's now a picture of what the one percent have wrought with their class warfare of the past thirty or forty years.

5) Corporate Income Tax:

I confess I'm a little ambivalent because these are passed on to consumers. However, as late as the sixties, the corporate income tax accounted for thirty percent of receipts. I see no reason why profitable corporations should get a free pass, or even additional funds from the Treasury. They are wanting something for nothing. They don't give that to their workers, so why should we give it to them?

I think one percent off the top is a good place to start.