Crazy Tax Code Serves Big Business
Wednesday - April 13, 2011
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Del.icio.us“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are† willing to work and give to those who would not.” -Thomas Jefferson
If you’re reading this and have not yet filed your federal tax return, you’d better get hustling because Friday’s the deadline if you haven’t applied for an extension.
This time of the year is misery for me. I spend many days organizing all my receipts for my Schedule C, my wife’s unreimbursed expenses, my gas receipts for business use of the car, my mortgage papers.
I do my own taxes with Turbo Tax, carefully and conscientiously, but seeking every possible deduction.
It shouldn’t have to be this way, and you should not have to be paying a preparer if you’re not up to using the tax-preparation software. I hope I’ve not nagged on you too much, but here goes:
It’s obvious that large corporations have successfully lobbied Congress over the years to keep the tax code full of arcane things that basically allow so many of them to deduct enough to make their tax liability come out to zero.
Otherwise, why would the IRS put us through this misery and the system through a tax nightmare of W-2 and 1099 computer record-keeping to track every one of our wage-earning citizens?
Have you ever read that arcane stuff in the tax code? I have. I don’t understand much of it. It’s impossible to decipher. The IRS sometimes can’t decipher it. When I was in Vietnam and renting out our house, the IRS sent me a letter saying I can’t rent the house I live in. I wrote on the bottom of its letter “Are you blind?” and sent it back. They froze my bank account until I called and explained I was renting a house I did not live in.
There is an easy solution and it’s called the progressive flat tax. No deductions. Everything is income. Your tax rate depends on your income. You don’t need the mortgage deduction or the depreciation. Your tax rate will be low if your income is low. Everything is income. Nothing is deductible. Your tax return can be on a postcard.
Why don’t we have that? Because the current tax code allows nearly 90 percent of big corporations to pay no tax by claiming all those loopholes designed for them but not for us. I can’t claim a capital depreciation by building a new house or buying several new cars.
They’ll say “it’s good business and growth.”
I say baloney! It’s good for the major execs who get stock options and deferred salary.
I never got either. I have one mortgaged house, not the allotted two for mortgage-deduction purposes under the tax code. I don’t have any of those “special depreciation” things spread all over the code.
It’s absolutely crazy, our web of tax law.
But it’s crazy-good for some big-money people.
Just crazy for you and me.
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