Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 Sham

I’ve worked with the tax law for 30 years, and I don’t think it’s all that complicated.

Anyone that starts off an article with that sentence is out of touch with reality.

(1) The current tax code is 70,000 pages long. Or, 80,000; or 100,000; or maybe 110,000. The fact is even the IRS doesn't know how many pages are in the actual tax code.

(2) Call the IRS and ask them a tax question. They'll give you and answer, and then they will tell you they cannot gurantee the answer is correct, and that having asked the IRS for help is no defense against filing an incorrect return.

In other words, if you do exactly what the IRS tells you, you can still have your life ruined financially, or worse even go to jail for filing an "incorrect" tax return.

70,000 pages; refusal to gurantee a correct answer; taxpayers going to jail for following IRS advice, none of that's complicated. Sure.

****>> I looked at the first 50 posts and not a single comment on the actual substance of the article <<

Seems about par for the course these days!****
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Too bad. The sign was the key. They should have tried reading it from the bottom up.

Compare to: Rick Perry’s tax, spending and regulatory reduction plan. Best I have seen yet, not that I endorse him. But it seems to be far better than Cain’s 18-0-9 Plan. We’ll see.

http://www.rickperry.org/content/uploads/2011/10/Cut-Balance-and-Grow-Summary.pdf /

The old 1040-EZ Form is probably too complicated for some. But if you read beyond the first paragraph, I admitted that there are some complexities and pinpointed where they are. But the basic concept of taking gross income, subtracting some kind of standard deduction, subtracting a personal exemption and looking up the amount of tax on a table is not that freaking complex.

Most people mess up by forgetting part of their income, not because they can’t add, subtract, or comprehend what’s deductible and what’s not.

“...taxes for the wealthy would drop considerably under Cain’s proposal. The Tax Policy Center projects in 2013, the first year the Cain plan could be enacted, 95 percent of people making $1 million or more would get a tax cut that averaged $487,300.”

“By way of comparison, only 16 percent of people making between $50,000 and $75,000 a year would get a tax cut, averaging $1,959. At least 70 percent of people in this middle-income category would see their average federal taxes rise by $4,326.”

And that’s why I call it a “Sham”. It’s not what it portends to be.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2011/1026/Which-GOP-flat-tax-plan-is-fairest-of-them-all

***Your charts are all wrong Mr. Tax Attorney. Yeah right! - For instance, have you ever heard of embedded taxes? How can you factor the exact same expenses after 999??? Duh!***

So then you mean that after 9-9-9 is implemented my mortgage interest expense and property taxes will go down by 9%? Or do you mean that businesses will pay their employees 9% less? The expenses are the same under either tax system as far as I can see. Duh!

***The tax code is complicated to the American people, many of whom hire H&R Block to fill out their short forms for the IRS. Most are so mathematically-challenged they wouldn’t think of reading the forms and filling them out themselves.***

Sounds like the tax code might not be the problem then. Because most of the people that stumble into an H&R Block Office, or stagger into a Jackson Hewitt office, wind up getting ripped off at rates of $200 to $300 for a simple 1040EZ (with the rapid refund and all). We don’t do any of that stuff here, but if someone is too dumb to fill out a 1040EZ Form, then it doesn’t matter how simple the tax code is.

We only deal with complex returns such as corporations, S-corps, partnerships, real estate investors, non-profits, multiple related company’s, etc... If someone can’t fill out a simple 1040-EZ Form, than frankly, I don’t even want to waste my time talking with them. Some people will always need an HR Block or some kind of crutch.

The tax form could say, [Take line 1 of your W-2 Form, and multiply it by 9, write the result on line Y. Then write line 2 from your W-2 here. Subtract line X from line Y and enter the result on line Z. This is your refund or the amount you owe.] And people would still get it wrong.

If that’s the case, then I don’t think we have a tax code problem, I think we’ve got a dawdling problem. Most people can’t even balance a checkbook, not that they can’t, but they don’t take the time. This generation is stuck on twitter, facebook and their cellphones so much that it’s probably hopeless.

***For the other commentators here: Hey, I don’t write the laws. I mearly read, interpret, and help small business owners by protecting their rights, and keeping them out of the traps. I’ll be happy to return to what I was doing before I started doing this if someone finds an easier way. Maybe they’ll find a way where payroll can be done, and bills paid without human intervention too. As for 9-9-9 goes, I have mearly read and interprested what it says and passed it on. If you have a problem with the plan, talk Cain. If you have a problem with me, talk to my boss.***

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