—State and local governments do it every day, on every purchase. Some online retailers collect state taxes nationwide and manage to pay them to the respective states.—
It’s even worse, and they do it. A particular city can have a different tax rate in a shopping mall than in the rest of the city. I used to work with the tax department at a multinational. Tax collection within the US is a nightmare, but we did it. It costs a LOT of money and there are a LOT of employees, including a whole section of the company’s legal department, devoted to tax.
If our tax system ever got REALLY streamlined, we’d have hundreds of thousands of white collar jobs go up in smoke. And since a large portion of them are attorneys, you can bet legal action would be vicious to keep it from happening and maybe even moreso afterward, if it did.
999 will not fly, even if it is the greatest tax plan in the history of man. Our system would have to INVOLUNTARILY crash (thereby losing it’s power) before it would be seriously considered. That’s just the way the world works.
Every system eventually needs massive reform. Every massive reform will be vehemently resisted by the special interest groups feeding on the system as it is.
That’s also just the way it works.
But if the system is going to crash without massive reform, then it’s pick your poison. Try to manage the reform or wait and try to respond to the crash.
I have my own ties with what used to be called the Big Eight accounting firms in their overseas operations and ex-pat tax collection. I know what you’re talking about.
I still call it the same way.
P.S. I do agree with you that there would be a catcalysmic shift in the white collar economy with so many tax accountants, lawyers, compliance officers, etc. being put out of those jobs because their work became an historical anachronism.
Not pretty. But again, it happens with every economic reset. There were thousands and thousands of liverymen and livery owners, buggy makers, stables, latern makers, hay balers, pooper-scoopers and so on put out of business when the automobile was invented and went into mass production.
Sometimes there is no way out but through.