How about spending less?
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." --Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
In other words, Congress cannot lay taxes for anything that it cannot justify under Section 8 of Article I of the Constitution, SS and Obamacare being glaring examples.
And the only reason that corrupt Congress has been able to establish constitutonally indefensible taxing and spending programs is the following imo. Voters abused their voting power when they repeatedly elected FDR in support of his constitutonally indefensible New Deal federal spending programs as a consequence of likely widespread ignorance of constitutional limits on Congress's powers to regulate domestic government services.
In fact, defense issues aside, one of very few federal government services that citizens should be unquestioningly paying taxes for is the postal service (1.8.7).
Key Points to remember.
1) DON’T PAY TAX FOR RIGHTS
2) NO DOUBLE TAXATION
I should have mentioned the following concerning Congress’s limited power to lay taxes in my previous post. Belows is my rough estimate for how much Section 8 of Article I should be costing taxpayers per year.
Given that the plurality of clauses in Section 8 are defense related, and given that the Department of Defense (DoD) budget for 2011 was $600+ billion, I will generously round the DoD figure up to $1 trillion, probably much less, as an estimate as to how much taxpayers should be paying Congress annually to fulfill its Section 8 duties.
In other words, we shouldn’t be seeing these multi-trillion dollar federal budgets that the corrupt media, including Fx News is reporting without mentioning Justice Marshall’s clarification of Congress limited power to lay taxes in federal public policy discussions.
OK, let us say that they do away with the “Charitable Deduction”, who will fill the gap that this cessation of funds will cause? Many charities operate with volunteers, will they be replaced with government ‘paid’ employees? Compare the actions of FEMA with Salvation Army and Red Cross, then imagine FEMA doing it all.
Many of these tax law ‘safe harbors’ were created to encourage good social actions and the jury is still way out on the net effect of wholesale changes. Remember the AMT was originally brought in to ‘punish’ about 200 tax payers who legitimately ‘loopholed’ their income for $0 tax burden in 1968. Now a return of the full unadjusted AMT stands to force 30 million taxpayers into paying AMT.
As a seasonal tax preparer, I take hours of education and training to be prepared for the coming tax season. Yet increasingly, my confidence in my knowledge is offset by my equal knowledge that the tax law is complex and frequently contradictory. I would love to see this “disgrace to human history” be put out of our mutual misery, but when every jot and tilde of it has enthusiastic adherents, only a whole-scale replacement has a chance, which is slim to none!
This is one of the “fix it or die” problems we’re facing.
There is no “we can’t”.
Right away I see two deductions that could be greatly modified or eliminated.
First would be the mortgage deduction. Ideally, it should be eliminated. Those people who rent should not be subsidizing homeowners. At the very least, the deduction should be limited to a certain amount and then only on a primary residence.
bfl
FIT File.
Belive it or not, warren buffet has a plan that could stop the spending, immediately.
Warren Buffett, in a recent interview with CNBC, offers one of the best quotes about the debt ceiling:
“I could end the deficit in 5 minutes,” he told CNBC. “You just
pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more
than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible
for re-election.
The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds)
took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple!
The people demanded it. That was in 1971 - before computers, e-mail,
cell phones, etc.
Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took one (1) year
or less to become the law of the land - all because of public pressure.
Warren Buffet is asking each addressee to forward this email to
a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask
each of those to do likewise.
In three days, most people in The United States of America will
have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed
around.
Congressional Reform Act of 2012
1. No Tenure / No Pension.
A Congressman/woman collects a salary while in office and receives no
pay when they’re out of office.
2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social
Security.
All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the
Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into
the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the
American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.
3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all
Americans do.
4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise.
Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
5. Congress loses their current health care system and
participates in the same health care system as the American people.
6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the
American people.
7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen/women are void
effective 12/1/12. The American people did not make this
contract with Congressmen/women.
Mortgage interest can go - most middle class folks only “benefit” from it if they overextend themselves and buy a home they can’y really afford.
I heard a great progressive admission recently. The man was describing the virtues of Cap and Trade.
The tax on carbon is paid by fuel users. Those are actually producers who pass the tax onward to customers on a per usage basis. That is everyone pays, even kids.
That means Cap and Trade is actually a scheme to extract taxes from those now paying no income taxes. The once removed payment device provides political cover and deniability for raising taxes on the poor. It can be argued that Cap and trade is in fact a fair tax in that everyone pays on the basis of energy consumption