(5) Any system of voluntary compliance legitimately must rest on the capability of the individual taxpayer to assess and pay his own liability to the system. When the system becomes so complicated that expert help must be hired, just to execute an annual tax filing, something is wrong with the system.
Or in other words, if educated, reasonably intelligent people can't file their own income tax returns because they involve questions that reasonable intelligent people can't answer without hiring a professional, something is WRONG with this system.
Any binding tax liability/assessment should be as transparent, logical, and simple in its requirements as possible, such that any average American taxpayer can figure out what that assessment is, on what basis, and find it legitimate.
In other words, a taxpayer should not need to engage the services of a professional class of specialist in order to fulfull his duty as a citizen of the United States of America.
The worst parts to me are that the Tax Code is over complicated, falsely represented and discriminatory.
And I strongly agree with you, hosepipe!
One day people will realize that property tax per se eliminates ownership for the very reason you describe. People end up renting their property from the government.
In the Declaration of Independence "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" phrase - the "pursuit of happiness" meant property ownership.
We are like the proverbial frogs being boiled, ever so slowly.
My opinion exactly.
I should be able to fill out my W4 when I first hire in, and there is no reason I should ever have to re-visit the issue. The table should be simple enough that the employer merely deducts the correct amount, its his problem to get it right, not mine.
The idea that ordinary working people should have to deal with this is silly. The whole April 15th madness is just that, madness. Eliminate the intricacies, and make it the employer's problem to get it right. Working people are not businesses and should not be taxed as if they were. The tax table should be simplicity itself. If your wife works, or doesn't work, it shouldn't affect what is taken from your check. If you have a side business, fine, get an accountant, but your wage earnings from your day job ought have no bearing on your tax from your business. And vice versa.
I want simple. My gross earnings are "x". The percentage is "y". I owe "z". Back of a post card, and not my problem, rather, my employer's problem.
I have lived where that was the case. Its not complicated, in fact, thats the point. Its supremely uncomplicated.