I wouldn’t set a hard number value for this. Make it based on how low income is defined, or something dynamic that can change over the years with inflation.
For example, in parts of California you could be making $80k and you would still be considered low income because of how expensive it is just to live there. After paying for housing, there won’t be much left over.
The problem with that is that will cause areas to drive up housing prices to expand the untaxed group to general more “upper middle class” to price out undesirables and draw in higher earners as a form of tax break. This already happens without the tax bracket scaling and would probably get 10x worse.
I don’t have a great alternative, but maybe a weighted CoL combined with 0% below median income in the district? Something like that, but that would probably cause low CoL areas to pay way more taxes. Maybe I am thinking of it wrong.
I wouldn’t set a hard number value for this. Make it based on how low income is defined, or something dynamic that can change over the years with inflation.
For example, in parts of California you could be making $80k and you would still be considered low income because of how expensive it is just to live there. After paying for housing, there won’t be much left over.
At minimum, tie it to inflation. But better yet, tie to cost of living and housing prices in a district.
The problem with that is that will cause areas to drive up housing prices to expand the untaxed group to general more “upper middle class” to price out undesirables and draw in higher earners as a form of tax break. This already happens without the tax bracket scaling and would probably get 10x worse.
I don’t have a great alternative, but maybe a weighted CoL combined with 0% below median income in the district? Something like that, but that would probably cause low CoL areas to pay way more taxes. Maybe I am thinking of it wrong.
Or to GDP, so lower income people will benefit from increase in productivity via lower taxes?