Posted on 04/18/2017 4:55:47 AM PDT by Kaslin
Thanks to the beneficence of the federal government (and the calendar), we Americans have until midnight on April 18 to file our income taxes. It's too bad filing taxes wasn't an easier process.
President Trump has pledged to reform our tax code, which, to most people, currently reads like a foreign language. Trump said tax reform would be a top priority for his administration, but he is up against powerful lobbyists working for the tax preparation industry and also charitable and other organizations who want to keep things just as they are, since some donors would be less likely to contribute if they lose their ability to claim deductions on their taxes.
Does anyone believe this tax code language is something we should maintain? "Enter 6 percent of the smaller of line 40 or the value of your Archer MSAs on December 31, 2015, including 2015 contributions made in 2016. Include this amount on Form 1040, line 58A or Form 1040NR, line 56B." This little gem is in T.R. Reid's book "A Fine Mess," a work about our tax system that should raise the ire of any taxpayer not already irate.
Business Insider calculates that 31 countries have a simpler tax code than the United States. Estonia ranks first in simplicity. Estonia!
The federal government collected record amounts of individual income taxes and payroll taxes through the first six months of fiscal 2017, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement published by CNS News.
Through March, CNS' Terence P. Jeffrey reports, "the federal government collected approximately $695,391,000,000 in individual income taxes. That is about $7,387,280,000 more than the $688,003,720,000 in individual income taxes (in constant 2017 dollars) that the federal government collected in the first six months of fiscal 2016.
"The federal government also collected $547,491,000,000 in Social Security and other payroll taxes during the first six months of fiscal 2017. That is about $2,731,820,000 more than the $544,491,000,000 in Social Security and other payroll taxes (in constant 2017 dollars) that the government collected in the first six months of fiscal 2016."
After all that revenue collection (and there is much more, as every taxpayer knows who purchases any product or service, from your telephone bill, to a ticket on a commercial airline), the Treasury still ran a deficit of $526,855,000,000 in the first six months of fiscal 2017.
As Ronald Reagan said, the reason we have a deficit (and a debt approaching $20 trillion) "is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much."
In a recent interview on NPR's "Fresh Air" program with Terry Gross, T.R. Reid said: "I was in the Netherlands on March 31 -- their tax day is April 1 -- talking to a manager. He makes about $200,000 a year. He has a whole panoply of investments, two kids in private schools, two mortgages. He'd have to fill out 12 forms in the United States.
"And I said, Michael, how do you do your taxes? They're due tomorrow. He says, well, I pop a beer. I go online and see if the government's got the numbers right. And if they do, I hit a button. Takes five minutes. He says, but you know, sometimes I start checking the numbers. (If) you start checking the numbers, it could take almost half an hour just to pay your taxes. He was outraged."
The U.S. government has all of our income information (W2s and 1099s). Most of us have a pattern of deductions, from mortgage interest, to charitable giving. Government computers could do the work and send us a bill for what we owe. We could check their numbers, add or subtract from them as warranted and be done with it, instead of enduring an expensive (if we must hire a tax preparer, as I do) and time-consuming experience no one enjoys.
Instead, taxpayers struggle to decipher the undecipherable while politicians and lobbyists, who donate to their campaigns, continue to block comprehensive tax reform.
FLAT TAX!!!!
10% across the board- NO DEDUCTIONS (not even real estate)
AND- (this is the important part) THE GOVERNMENT HAS TO LIVE WITHIN THAT INCOME - no more ‘deficit spending’
And if you like the ‘fair tax’ with the ‘pre-bate’ and ‘tax inclusive’ 27% rate please allow me to beat some sense into you
A lot of the complexity that adds to tax preparation expense does not even come from what most of us would consider “income”, it comes from capital gains, dividend “income”, interest “income”, etc. For everyone who proposes a flat tax, you are not really solving the problem unless you redefine income to mean “wages” as it was originally intended to mean. I am ashamed to say that I spent over $700 on tax preparation fees this year; my old preparer retired last year (usually spent around $200).
Yes, and the rats have also blocked tax reform for decades. A complicated tax scheme assembled by lawyers, tax lawyers, lawyer politicians, and other assorted con artists. A national sales tax would put them all out of business.
One comment about the Netherlands: I went there about 10 years ago at the invitation of Dutch Health, an arm of their socialist government. I was to be reimbursed for all expenses. It took nearly 10 months for this to occur, because they lost my receipt copies twice. That’s right, I had to send in receipts 3 times, after making the trip to lay out an experimental plan for them, for free, to test the bioavailability of Pb from the hoard of Pb-contaminated sites on which they have built their residential houses.
I spent $600 last year and don’t have the bill for this year. I’ve been spending at least $500 for years. National sales tax is what it needed, that way, everybody pays something.
Mandate that ALL government employees do their own taxes. See how they like that sh!t.
Flat tax.
I think you have that exactly backwards.
Wages are not “income” because you have traded your labor for money of exactly the same value.
Capital Gains, Dividends, and Interest are “income” because you put in a certain value and received a higher value in return.
We could get closer to a flat tax and eliminating deductions and tax credits if an AMT applied to everyone, not just those of higher incomes.
Suppose everyone owed the GREATER of 10% of AGI or whatever the tax code dictated for their bracket after deductions and credits. If deductions, exemptions and credits take your tax bill under 10%, tough, you still owe 10%. When deductions are useless, people won’t care when they are eventually phased out.
Of course the Dimms would go crazy saying it would negate the goal of EITC for poor workers, be a “regressive tax”, etc. Compromise by giving them the Minimum Wage increase they want to $10/hr indexed to inflation so we don’t have to revisit it every few years. So the “poor workers” they are championing get a 25% pay raise but have to now pay 10% tax, and they are still way ahead.
You don’t need a sales tax to make sue everyone pays.
You could make a minimum income tax rate no matter what deductions and credits would otherwise do — an AMT for everyone, not just the high earners.
Or you could have businesses pay a 5% tax on gross revenues instead of profits, and everyone would pay as that tax was embedded in the price of everything they buy. A 5% GRT would replace ALL other federal taxes including Corporate and Personal Income taxes and SS/M taxes. It would have to be paired with import tariffs and export credits, however, or it would kill off American manufacturing even worse than the embedded corporate and payroll taxes are doing.
Problem with income tax, is 50% of the population will continue to make no contribution. National sales tax fixes that glaring disparity.
Eliminate Mandatory Withholding and there will be a Tax Revolution overnight.
Agree, consumption taxes are the best tax. The tax is then "voluntary", and you get less of what you tax, so taxing anything that leads to growth (e.g. income)is the wrong idea.
In addition, those with great buying power will pay more taxes. This will hit the homowood glitterati, and the elites right in the snout.
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FLAT TAX!!!!
10% across the board- NO DEDUCTIONS (not even real estate)
AND- (this is the important part) THE GOVERNMENT HAS TO LIVE WITHIN THAT INCOME - no more ‘deficit spending’
And if you like the ‘fair tax’ with the ‘pre-bate’ and ‘tax inclusive’ 27% rate please allow me to beat some sense into you
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No. No. No. Fair Tax w/o ‘prebates’.
1) Flat tax is still an involuntary\slave tax, Fair Tax is VOLUNTARY.
2) Flat tax does NOT encompass ALL (there are those still w/o skin in the game).
3) The govt. is TOO damn big; start it @ 10-15% and reduce it til it IS of Constitutional size. (Fair Tax is too high); it need not be ‘revenue neutral’.
4) Flat tax would still require SOME form of collection agency. Fair Tax uses the existing sales tax (person/biz > biz > State > Fed) = no need for record keeping/etc. & multi-steps removed from govt intrusion.
5) Fair Tax would encourage re-use/barter/trade/etc.
NOBODY should pay $0% taxes. Govt for/by/of the People, ALL the People should pay.
If you got any more ‘sense’ to debate, I’m listening.
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Eliminate Mandatory Withholding and there will be a Tax Revolution overnight.
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(Small)biz already do this....don’t recall any street revolts just yet.
You’re talking about EXISTING piggy-banks, I mean taxpayers. If they haven’t figured what’s taken out a/o WHY for/to WHOM, writing a quarterly check, IMO, isn’t going to do much for the other 50.x% whom don’t.
What percentage are ya thinkin? Curious.
I have not crunched the numbers or looked it up, say 15%. What say you?
Not sure....love it to be 10-12%. My effective tax rate now is about 17%.
Our income is too low to purchase health insurance (almost all of my wife’s monthly pay would go to premiums) so we didn’t get any form 1095’s. Without 1095’s the tax return has an error. If the tax return has an error you cannot e-file your federal tax return. If you cannot e-file your federal tax form you also cannot e-file your state tax form. If nothing else, the congress needs to sever the link between health insurance and the income tax.
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