Posted on 12/06/2017 12:22:37 PM PST by Thalean
According to a report from the Tax Foundation, Americans spent $409 billion (2.2 percent of GDP) on tax compliance in 2016. This works out to 8.9 billion man-hours wasted preparing tax returns, which is the equivalent of roughly 4 million full time jobs.
The Tax Foundation’s figure includes time spent by individuals preparing and filing their taxes, and money spent by individuals and corporations on tax services provided by accountants and lawyers. Essentially, it is wasted money.
The billion dollar question: why does America waste so much money doing taxes? Because of complexity. The US Tax Code is so inordinately convoluted, and mired in ancillary regulations, that most people have no hope of understanding how it all fits together. In fact, some 90 percent of Americans think the tax code is too difficult for an ordinary person to understand.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationaleconomicseditorial.com ...
I spend almost $200 on it every year
$400 for me.
Answer: They don't want to.
Reason: They're getting paid not to.
Excellent article. Excellent point.
And I know people who save far more in taxes than what they paid for the return preparation. For every winner there is a loser.
That said, Congress should not be picking the winners and losers. And they should not be playing favorites, and selling their votes for campaign contributions. We need a truly level playing field.
BOOM!! MAGA
They’ll never clean up the tax code. Most of those messes in the tax code are there for donors. Most of them translate to “this big donator in this congressional district gets a 15% cut”. Since every congressman and senator has half a dozen big donors to reward the tax code stays a mess.
...and another $500 billion on Welfare.
As the ‘income tax’ is completely illegal (violates 4th, 5th, 13th), is Socialist\Communistic in nature and unnecessary (Congress can borrow ANY amount it wishes w/o any need for taxes), it should have been done away with from the 1st thought.
Course, if Fedzilla were still in its Constitutional bounds, that would also eliminate the need for the income tax as well.
Oh, if we but a Constitutional Republic....
What happened to that postcard Paul Ryan was carrying around?
Measuring a system perturbs it.
I have a fairly simple tax return. It is actually more a pain in the rear end to do it online than submit it via snail mail. Last year I got bogged down with $5 worth of dividend checks and interest payments from the state of Illinois. This year I will be filling a paper return.
BitCoin and other digital currencies are based on blockchain, which is nothing more than a transparent accounting system hosted on thousands of servers making it nearly impossible to falsify and auditable by anyone.
Blockchain could revolutionize tax accounting and make every penny the feral government spends accountable.
Therefore it will never happen.
>>In fact, some 90 percent of Americans think the tax code is too difficult for an ordinary person to understand.
As someone married for a long time to a long time, serious, high end tax CPA, the number who *should* think that should be more like 99% or more. It’s a convoluted mess.
The small business i am with pays about $10K per year for simple withholdings, filings, IRS payments, state tax BS, and tax advice throughout the year and that’s in addition to our book-keeper, accountant on staff.
Then the employees have their own accountants doing their taxes....
the USA has a massive and complex government. Is the cost of running a massive progressive, global empire.
Not unintentional.
On the conspiratorial side, it makes sense; Tell me that the tax preparers and accounting sector aren’t powerful lobbiests.
On the practical side it makes even more sense. Government has the power of authority. It’s the little person’s job to comply. Hassle is not their concern. Nor is cost.
Our CPA bill last year had gone to $425 for the Fed and Californicator land. 3 family units use the same CPA!
He has told 2 different family units, that we will not need him after this bill goes through for our Federal taxes.
The other family has the option of using the new plan, paying a little more and avoiding his big fee for them.
We will still get charged for our Californicator tax bill prep.
One of the simplest ways for the federal government to levy taxes would be to bill each state proportionately based on its population. The same way that the number of representatives from each state is determined. It would be up to each state to figure out how to raise the revenue needed to pay their federal tax bill. Another easy, fair, simple method would be to replace the current income tax with a simple national retail sales tax. Neither method would require individuals to file tax returns. If the powers-that-be really wanted to do the right thing they would implement one of the plans I’ve described above. Of course, they won’t do either.
My Wife spends $600.00+ for her S Corp.
So do I.
Then we pay $300 to file our joint taxes.
We get a deal because my Wife’s Sister is a CPA and has done taxes independently for years.
One year we went to a local CPA firm and we paid $3,500.
We also pay a local bookkeeper to handle our payroll(s) and distributions.
I’m not complaining, just joining the discussion.
Democrats should seize this opportunity to point out that the complexity of the tax code creates economic growth—$409 billion a year! Simplify the tax code, and 2.2% of the GDP goes POOF!
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