Of much greater concern to me, a tax-paying US citizen but permanent resident of Brazil, will I be forced to pay and yet not eligible for any medical service without buying plane tickets to the USA? What if I am too sick to travel for 10 hours in a plane? I think some of the Amish do go to hospitals in the horse drawn buggies. Those that would not are not wanting modern medical service - Getting well or not is God's decision. I assume that they will pay as I think they pay for public schools even thought they often have their own. I also think that there are some special laws / rules for them: For example their children can legally quit school at age 12, not 18.
Ah well, I was thinking of the "pays Social Security / does not pay Social Security" brackets - a 15% drop that overides all but two of the bracket jumps. But in fact, in the US, it doesn't. It increases for a bit, then drops a little as the SS kicks out, then increases a bit more until a certain percentage of the income gets into the range of "controllable" - i.e. the recipient has some control over how it is paid to them - and from there on out it drops, reaching a low at the Warren Buffet / hedge fund manager level where it is about at the poverty level rate or maybe a little under. This has relevance, maybe, to the matter of paying for socialized medicine - which will hopefully be more acceptable to Americans (as indeed seems to be happening) as the current setup continues to fall apart at great expense, and the patchwork fixes like this latest bill prove unable to handle things.
to iceaura: I was speaking of the income tax only when I said "progressive". Your are speaking of all the funds the government collects - there are many, but social security is a large one for typical workers; but not for the retired. Then it is zero and medicare is more. There are many dozens of others - small fees like hunting licenses, marriage licenses, airport fees, import duties ... these will impact different people differently and I was not including any of them - only the IRS's income tax. That is the tax I tried to make more simple and more fair with my tax law on a 3by5 index card.
