Dear Future  President:

I first want to congratulate you on being elected President of the United States. But that also means we have very high expectations for you. And I, for one, have a very important mission for you. I need you to please begin to do something about taxes. There has been a lot going on with many people protesting against higher taxes and others saying that higher taxes would give us a free college education or healthcare for everybody. And that is a beautiful idea. But I am writing to let you know that raising taxes is not the right idea.

I live in California and here we have one of the highest income tax rates in the entire country. 13.3% of my dad’s hard work is taken away from him every month and most of it is not returned. We already are low-income, yet the government takes away the same amount of money from everyone. It may sound like I want rich people to get higher tax rates, but I am also against that. Why should someone be taxed higher because of their hard work? To me that makes absolutely no sense. I want to be a doctor in the future and knowing that a lot more than 20% of my money will be taken away from me does not really motivate me. 

Many use France as an example of a country that succeeds with high tax rates. They have free health care, for the most part, and it is all government paid. It also means the people have a higher tax rate, but there is a system. Those who are low income get taxed much less than the upper class families. But get this: the lowest tax rate in France is 15% and that is for the low-income families. That means that if we were to implement a similar strategy in the United States, low-income families would pay at least $5,000 in taxes. For a low-income family, such as mine, we need every dollar we can for food, clothing, and rent, so a graduated tax rate system still might not work here.

In conclusion, I am saying that a higher tax rate is not a solution for our economy or a way to reduce our poverty rate. A  higher tax rate will only anger a huge part of the country.Instead we should start producing jobs and create new industries so that unemployment can decrease. 

Sincerely,

Luis Vidal