My what a caveat you have there.
Do you believe that "gaming the system" is proper?
Whether you like the current law or not, that’s what you have to deal with.
You can’t fill out your 1040 on the basis of what you would LIKE the law to be.
Again, you are using class warfare terms like “gaming the system”.
Particularly in a business situation, the law allows some flexibility in the way you treat and report your income and expenses. If one method, properly applied, results in paying less in taxes than an alternate method, also properly applied, then you are allowed to choose the method that is best for you.
That appears to be what you consider “gaming the system”.
Other than the fact that the whole process is overly complicated, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with using the options that the law gives you to your benefit.
If the federal government were a mere service provider, the idea that shirking taxes is morally wrong might have some weight.
The reality is that the Federal government is an active, rapidly advancing enemy of individual liberty, intent on destroying our civilization, and reducing us to dependence upon it.
And it does that, in part, through the use of funds gained through tax revenue. Of course, even without that revenue, government would borrow, print or steal whatever it needed, but any citizen who keeps what's rightfully his, and thus deprives the Federal leviathan of it, is a hero.
For a system that will put it’s boot on the neck of a hard working middle class person running their own business who inadvertently underpaid taxes in some way (and yes, I have personally seen this behavior at work) but that same system lets another person skate on their taxes who OWES millions of dollars in taxes but gets a polite pass because it is a politician, celebrity, or person of some correct race/gender/whatever of some sort...yes.
YES.
I believe (as you put it) “gaming the system” is completely, totally, and absolutely justified and fair and valid, because the gross injustice and unfairness of the administration of that system is so far in the other direction it boggles the mind.
If you are not breaking any laws, and exploiting “holes” they did not plug, then, yes. I support it completely.
I support wearing a bulletproof vest because it frustrates the people who might try to fill me full of holes, and the people who are trying to fill me full of holes think it is some kind of trick to wear a bulletproof vest. But there is no law saying I can’t.
Makes no difference that they would put a bullet in my face if it served their purposes, they are just angry that they can’t rub me out any damned way they please.
Our government has the power to raise taxes. The fact that an amendment to tax personal income is in place may be a good or bad thing (I agree with those who think it is a bad thing) but the government obviously can tax us.
And I don’t have a problem with taxes, anyone who is a citizen shouldn’t have a problem with taxes. We need taxes for various things that are necessary. We should probably have them more at the state and local government level than we do at the federal level, but we do need them in both places.
What we should have a problem with is excessive taxes, taxes without representation (where I think we are now) and unfair/unjust application of taxes.
If the bodies that enforce the taxes abuse that power unfairly, then we have the RIGHT to follow the tax laws TO THE ABSOLUTE LETTER.
If that means putting on a bulletproof vest that THEY manufactured (tax code with holes in it) I don’t have a problem with it. It isn’t “unfair” and it isn’t “dishonest”.