HACKER Q&A
📣 SDedu

Can a Capital-Flipping Tax System Pay Off the U.S. Debt


After more than a year of iteration, I’ve released an updated version of the PAS Tax Plan, a post-partisan proposal designed to replace the current tax system with a capital-based funding model.

The goal is to make the U.S. fiscally solvent without austerity, new taxes, or inflation, while creating a national framework that rewards productivity, innovation, and savings.

Core Mechanism • Weekly payroll contributions (e.g., $600) are flipped by the Federal Reserve through reserve banking principles → $5,400 in new capital. • Half is returned to the worker, the other half split between the National Budget and Social Security Trust Funds. • Every participant receives a 10% annual capital return, aligning personal income with national capital growth. • Traditional taxes (income, corporate, payroll, capital gains, etc.) are eliminated.

Debt & Sovereign Model • The Top 250 wealthiest Americans contribute capital infusions and sovereign equity allocations to retire the federal public debt. • The Bottom 250 U.S. counties receive capital-flipping authority through a Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) to resolve student loans, consumer debt, and state liabilities. • Replaces leveraged buyouts with equity-based value creation — capital and ownership stay domestic.

Outcomes • U.S. transitions from borrowing to self-financing. • Public debt paid down through internal capitalization. • Citizens and enterprises receive direct capital returns instead of tax refunds. • Incentives are aligned: those who create value share in national upside.

I will post the full plan after careful consideration and critique from the HN community!

Questions for HN

1. What are the macro-economic or technical flaws you see in flipping payroll capital this way?

2. Could a Fed-IRS dual system manage this at scale using digital rails or tokenized reserves?

3. Would equity-based debt retirement (Top 250 / Bottom 250) be politically and legally feasible?

4. How might we pilot this through an existing SWF or state-level trial?

Appreciate any thoughtful critique — especially from economists, engineers, and policy thinkers interested in systemic reform.


  👤 dangus Accepted Answer ✓
What do you mean by flipping? Can you explain this better in a way that makes sense?

If I understand this right (and I might not) it sounds like you’re just making this into a flat tax that is wildly regressive.

It sounds like your system essentially has 0 taxes for the trust fund kids who have no income and live on asset appreciation and trading. No payroll, no tax.

I think it should be pointed out that there’s nothing wrong with the current system in terms of being able to pay down debt to a more reasonable level, it has been the conscious choice of the donor class to continue to cut taxes to the wealthy (tax cut and jobs act, big beautiful bill). Without those cuts the US system would easily produce a surplus. Instead, we have a system that transfers wealth from the federal government to oligarchs.


👤 aborsy
The US debt is the result of USD being the global currency reserve. As long as that status is maintained, there will be debt.

👤 ksherlock
I don't understand your core mechanism. As you've described it, joe taxpayer pays, say, $600 in taxes to the IRS. The IRS gives that money to the federal reserve. The federal reserve runs their money printer and gives $2,700 back to joe taxpayer and $2,700 to the treasury. That's just inflation with extra steps. It would be interesting to see people clamoring to pay -more- taxes though.

👤 SHOwnsYou
Hello! Novelty is incredible.

While economics is basically voodoo, it appears you've stumbled onto a fast track to derailing the country.

The federal reserve flipping $600 capital into $5400 of capital also creates $5400 of debt. Possibly more over time as interest weighs of the $5400. The way banks "flip" assets into higher amounts via fractional banking is by loaning it out. It doesn't just become 9x'd on their books magically. Someone has to take on the debt.

I'm not seeing how this is self-financing anything; it looks more like refinancing while causing gigantic inflation of the money supply by 9x. A $1 today is worth $0.10 after this. This is circular investment with leverage, backed by an increasingly unstable government.

Can you explain more on this actually works in practice? Where is any upside? Current debt goes away, but is replaced by 9x as much debt held by the federal reserve or swf?


👤 Blackstrat
No, I don't believe this will work. It's essentially a pyramid scheme. The Fed's fractional accounting system doesn't create new money. It increases the members lending power, i.e., more debt. The St. Louis Fed used to publish a good book on exactly how the Fed works. Might be worth a look.