My bossom buddy ,Best friend Ric Dees the taxman knows that most reliable salaried tax payers( teachers(TSC was the highest institutional tax payer last year) nurses, policemen earn less than 30,000 in income.Changing the tax rates would severely hit the tax revenue.Hence itakuwa populists to charge 20% for those earning less than 50K as long as our taxes are not used efficiently( Read in a corruption free environment).

@bwenyenye.. I'm still looking for someone to explain this one to me.. Why? Why? Why?

I think its ok to have a threshold below which one doesn't pay income tax, simply to reflect the ideal minimum living standard (much in the same way as minimum wages are set) but why should one pay 50% while another pays 40% on their wages??

Obaks may have inspired many people to become conscientious tax payers (although he doesn't pay any himself) but really I think Republicans have it right, the Govt should have little or nothing to do with my life.

There are two reasons:

FIRST: People who earn higher are not greatly affected by deductions from their incomes. If you take 30% from a guy earning 1m, he is left with 700k... what you can do with 1m per month you can do with 700k in two months!

But if you take 30% from a guy who get 10k, he is left with 7k and after paying rent, the balance might not be enough to buy food for the remainder of the month.

Thus this school of thought says, why not tax high incomes at a higher rate than smaller ones to compensate the poor guys?

SECOND: This is tied to the first. It begins with appreciating that it is only fair not to tax lower incomes for same reason as above. But as soon as you say than people earning less than, say 10k shall not be taxed, the people just above the threshold will complain that they are being overtaxed. So you introduce them to taxation gradually, starting with 10%, the 15% and so on.