Free Republic

It’s tax time again and once again we will be forced to knuckle under to our government’s demands. If you suspect there is plenty wrong with the current system, here are some facts to support your suspicions. The U.S. tax code is now 3.8 million words long. All of Shakespeare’s works are 900,000 words long. According to the National Taxpayers Union, U.S. taxpayers spend more than 7.6 billion hours complying with federal tax requirements. In 19 37 two pages of instructions came with a Form 1040; today 189 pages are necessary. There have been 4428 changes to the tax code...

(Excerpt) The U.S. does not have a significantly smaller welfare state than the European nations. We’re just better at hiding it. The Europeans provide welfare provisions through direct government payments. We do it through the back door via tax breaks. For example, in Europe, governments offer health care directly. In the U.S., we give employers a gigantic tax exemption to do the same thing. European governments offer public childcare. In the U.S., we have child tax credits. In Europe, governments subsidize favored industries. We do the same thing by providing special tax deductions and exemptions for everybody from ethanol producers...

Each year in the United States, an estimated 6.1 billion hours are spent complying with the federal tax code. I'm pretty sure at least half of those hours are spent by me. With less than two weeks remaining before this year's tax returns are due, I've barely made a dent in my stack of forms, receipts, and instructions. Each year the prospect of doing my taxes looms more daunting and dismal than the year before. Each year I wonder where I'll find the time, never mind the patience, to get it done. Each year's tax ordeal seems to require more...

Warren Buffett's secretary, after being pointed out on national television during Tuesday's State of the Union speech, now is facing criticism over her salary and second home. Debbie Bosanek and her boss both declined Thursday to disclose how much she's paid, saying it's private. In an interview with The World-Herald, Buffett also said none of the online guesses about Bosanek's salary is right, and the critics are missing his point. "I'm saying she is being treated unfairly in the tax code, as are tens of millions of others, compared to me," Buffett said. "They shouldn't change the rates on all...

This is America’s 100th year for individual income tax, a system as out of touch with our era as digital music is with the hand-cranked Victrola music players of 1912. It is also the 26th year of the Reagan-era reform for both personal and corporate tax, a grand design now buried under special-interest favors. With U.S. elections in November, and the George W. Bush tax cuts due to expire at the end of 2012, it’s time for a debate that goes beyond ginning up anger over taxes and the superficial issue of tax rates. It’s time to consider whether to...

As 2011 draws to a close, so do opportunities for farmers to take advantage of certain provisions of the federal tax code.... "The ability for bonus depreciation is changing, so if you're looking to make capital expenditures, this is the year to do it," ... "You can depreciate 100 percent now, it will go to 50 percent next year, and after that it could go away completely depending on what Congress does." ... The other significant impending change to the federal tax code involves Section 179, which according to Marrison, works somewhat similarly to the bonus depreciation allowance.

There are three "keystone deductions" in the IRS code that matter more than all others to Americans who itemize deductions. They are keystone deductions because they help the middle and upper middle class and they promote extraordinarily important social policies which have long been at the center of the traditional values held by most Americans. The first is the deduction for contributions to qualified charities, such as hospitals, high schools and colleges, charities serving everyone from children to the homless to the old and infirm, and of course churches of every denomination. The second keystone deduction allows homeowners with mortgages...

I ran the following concept by a friend who's wife is a CPA and by extension lives the tax code :-), and was no slouch himself at college level accounting. He agrees with my following assessment, and Fellow Freeper's I'd like to get your thoughts as well...I think what Herman has done is brilliant, here is what I think it is....Herman splits the baby in half. 999 is both a Flat Tax and a Fair Tax via the sales tax component. Both Fair and Flat Taxers will never agree, but they both get enough of their plan to still put...

Herman Cain's supporters know their part by heart. On the campaign trail, at the point in Cain's stump speech when he begins to discuss his plan for economic growth, they're always ready to join the chorus: "Nine! Nine! Nine!" They're referring, of course, to the Republican presidential candidate's proposal to throw out today's tax structure and replace it with a 9 percent income tax, a 9 percent business tax, and a 9 percent national sales tax. Cain would eliminate capital gains taxes, the payroll tax and the estate tax. For Cain, a Georgia businessman, 9-9-9 is a perfect platform. It's...

President Barack Obama is eyeing a 2012 campaign modeled on President Harry Truman’s 1948 successful re-election campaign against Congress. First, however, the White House will send to Capitol Hill an assortment of ‘economy-boosting’ legislation in a package that may include a major overhaul of the tax code. “I’ll be putting forward, when they come back in September, a very specific plan to boost the economy, to create jobs, and to control our deficit,” Obama told a friendly audience at a Decorah, Minnesota campaign-event on Monday. “My attitude is, get it done … [but] if they don’t get it done, then...

How many pages does it take to lay out the insanely complicated rules and requirements of our tax code? According to tax publisher CCH, the total number of pages devoted to federal tax code rules, IRS rulings, and regulations has grown to 72,536:It's no wonder that even the government's own experts and officials can't figure it out. Any system of rules that requires in excess 72,000 pages to explain and understand borders on useless. At this point it might as well be Calvinball. Via Cato's Chris Edwards.

This year, for the first time in more than a decade, I ventured outside the reassuring realm of TurboTax while preparing my return, looking for a late-arriving form at the IRS website. It's scary out there. Staring at bewildering forms and instructions, I flashed back to the days when I did my taxes by hand, based on my uncertain understanding of what was required, and hoped for the best -- "the best" being a future free of audits, interest on back taxes, liens, fines and prison. Although clever software has helped shield me from the infuriating, nerve-wracking complexity that the...

So you have just finished preparing your income taxes, but did you understand the tax code? If you said yes, you do not know what you do not know. The U.S. tax code has become so long, complex, contradictory and devoid of common sense that no one can fully understand it - and this includes tax professionals and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) personnel. Can honorable persons of good conscience harass, fine and even imprison their fellow citizens for an alleged violation of laws and regulations they themselves do not completely know? But that is a topic for another column. Tax...

The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee wants to cut the top U.S. tax rate to 25% for individuals and corporations, and cut or eliminate many popular deductions. View Full Image Getty Images The tax-overhaul plan form House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, left, would be designed to be revenue neutral overall. .The odds of quick action appear slender. But the move, from Rep. Dave Camp (R., Mich.), is significant as a marker in what will likely be a multiyear debate over revamping the tax code. The plan also provides Republicans with a position to pitch in...

The existence of the ObamaCare provision that forces every American, regardless of income, ability or personal preference to purchase a qualifying health insurance policy has been well reported, little attention has been paid to a similar mandate that will be far more wide-reaching, far costlier, and far more destructive to the attempts by hard-working Americans to protect their wealth. The provision in question comes in the form of a few seemingly minor alterations to the tax code, specifically Section 6041 dealing with the reporting of income on Form 1099. The newly enacted amendments force business owners to send out millions...

If the tax code were straightforward and simple, April 15 would be just another lovely spring date. But as April 15 approaches like an incoming monsoon, millions of Americans brace for the pain of writing checks to the IRS. Even worse, this annual discomfort begins even earlier, as taxpayers generate a cyclone of documents just to calculate their tax liability. America’s excruciatingly complex tax-compliance regime deepens the aggravation of sending hard-earned cash to Washington for virtual incineration by Congress. Completing tax forms required 7.75 billion hours of human labor in fiscal year 2008, according to the latest RegInfo.gov data. That...

Yes, it's that time of year when most of us begin the arduous task of completing our 2009 income tax returns. I just received a tax-planning memo from my accountant highlighting the new tax credits available under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Along with a listing and description of these credits, such as First Time Homebuyer, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and Alternative or Electric Drive Motor Vehicle, my CPA added this comment: I can't refrain from getting on the proverbial soapbox to point out that the Internal Revenue Code is no longer a body of tax...

"The power to tax is the power to destroy." - Chief Justice John Marshall The US tax code is a marvelous and impressive intellectual structure. As an engineer I took a business class in taxation for corporations while getting my MBA. Engineering is the art of extracting utility from first principles of science and combining it with hard-won practical experience. I found, to my frustration, that taxation is not like that. Taxes are whatever Congress and the IRS say they are, logic or principle be damned. Tax codes are often written to support national goals, above and beyond mere revenue...

Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30TH, 2009 AT 5:59 AM Streaming at 12:30: PERAB Meeting on Tax Reform Posted by Austan Goolsbee Today, the tax subgroup of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB) will hold a meeting to gather ideas on tax reform. It will be the first of several such meetings. The meeting will center on tax simplification and will be live streamed at www.whitehouse.gov/live. I wanted to take the opportunity to explain why we assembled this subgroup, what areas the PERAB tax reform subgroup will focus on...

Not even three months into his presidency, Barack Obama already has developed a nasty habit of making grandiose promises and proposals, doing precisely the opposite of what he says and celebrating his hypocrisy and insincerity as a policy triumph. Keep lobbyists out his administration? That lasted a couple of days. Lead a new era of fiscal responsibility? His agenda will run up budget deficits that George W. Bush couldn't have dreamed of. No tax increases of any kind for households earning less than $250,000 per year? He signed off on a huge cigarette tax hike that will pummel the poor....