The Moderate Liberal

It’s time to pay my taxes, and what a pain in the ass it is.

I fully understand the necessity to pay my taxes. But WHY does it have to be so damn hard?!

I listened to Ed Shultz on the radio today. Ed was complaining about a 22 month IRS audit of his finances that resulted in $15,000 in accountant fees, and only an incidental $1k penalty for some inoccuous violation.

When I look out across the unbelievably expensive infrastructure that is in place to help us make sense of the tax code, to withhold our money, to document our expenditures, to protect ourselves against audits, to give us advice, jails to hold tax dodgers — I have to ask: Can’t we do better than this??

The short answer is yes, we can. I’ve been reading up on Fair Tax proposals, and I’m liking what I hear. Some proposals would replace the Income Tax with a national sales tax upwards of 20%. The net effect on the middle class would be negligible or less than the current tax burden. Tax rebates could be offerred to lower income Americans, or tax refunds could be offerred on certain purchases that the Government wants to stimulate (such as no tax on hybrid automobiles… you get the idea).

As I prepare to spend the entire weekend combing through a huge box of receipts in preparation to meet my accountant next week, a sales tax sounds great. It stands to reason that the more you have, the more you spend, the more tax you will pay. The purported savings to this nation in gained productivity alone makes this idea worth trying.

Its clear to me that the U.S. tax system is a pure drain on American efficiency. Show me a small business owner has time to document mileage in accordance with the IRS guidelines, or who has the resources to defend himself against an IRS audit. The IRS is absolutely killing American innovation and business efficiency with this and other arcane rules that we could easily live without as a nation. Eliminating the IRS would save America $11.4 Billion in 2008. It would save the 60% of American who have to hire tax advice about $200 per year. It would allow the redeployment of tens of thousands of people in our economy, moving them to more productive work.

I say, lets give a national sales tax a try, and free ourselves from this annual torture. We can do better than the income tax — we’re Americans, afterall.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 16th, 2007 at 12:28 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.