U n I t 16

TOPIC: TAXATION TEXT A TEXT B GRAMMAR: The Conditional Sentences

Reading drills

1. Practise the pronunciation of the following words:

a) stress the first syllable:

tax, rate, income, food, clothing, medicine, purchase, product, merchant, weekly, monthly, final, proper, government, agency, source, cost, compensate, portion, revenue, property, permanently, tangible, bonds, mortgages, furniture, nearly, stock, fairly;

b) stress the second syllable:

proportional, progressive, regressive, impose, taxation, essentials, retail, collect, consumer, effective, include, attach, account, assessor, evaluate.

Text A

There are three types of taxes in the United States: proportional, progressive and regressive.

A proportional tax is one that imposes the same percentage rate of taxation¹ on everyone, no matter what their income². Even when income goes up, the per cent of total income paid in taxes does not change.

A progressive tax is one that imposes a higher percentage rate of taxation of people with high incomes than on those with low incomes.

A regressive tax is one that imposes a higher percentage rate of taxation on low incomes than on high incomes. For example, a person with a yearly income of $10,000 may spend $3,000 on food, clothing and medicine, while a person with a yearly income of $100,000 may spend $20,000 on the same essentials. If the state sales tax, which is a regressive tax, were 4 per cent, the person with the lower income would pay a lesser amount in dollars but a higher percentage of total income.^*

Sales Taxes3

A sales tax is a general tax levied on consumer purchases of nearly all products. It is added to the final price paid by the consumer.

For the most part, sales taxes are collected by individual merchants at the time of the sale and are turned over weekly or monthly to the proper government agency. Most states allow merchants to keep a small portion of what they collect to compensate for their time and book-keeping costs.

The sales tax generally is a very effective means of getting revenue for states and cities.

Property Taxes4

A major source of revenue is the property tax — a tax on real property and tangible or intangible personal property. Real property includes land, buildings and anything else permanently attached to them. Tangible property⁵ is all tangible items of wealth not permanently attached to land or buildings, such as furniture, automobiles, the stock of goods in retail stores and clothing. Intangible personal property⁶ includes stocks, bonds, mortgages, and bank accounts.

The main problem with personal property as a source of revenue is that many items are not always brought to the attention of the tax assessor — the person who places value on property for tax purposes. Because of this, many things that should be taxed never are. Another problem is that some property is very hard to evaluate fairly.

Comments

1. percentage rate of taxation — процентна ставка оподаткування

2. no matter what their income — незалежно від прибутку

3. sales taxes — податок з продажу

4. property taxes — податок на власність

5. tangible property — матеріальні активи

6. intangible property — нематеріальні активи