Posted by
KsReaganite on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:18:57 PM
An inspiring story but one that should have been unnecessary in a free country.
The fact that this woman had to prove her innocence against the very bureaucracy her hard earned tax dollars help subsidize is a testament to the utterly unprincipled nature of our domestic revenue generation system. As a long time professional in the financial services industry, I have seen first hand the absurdity of arcane rules that keep piling on the ordinary taxpayer who is driven from pillar to post just trying to understand the 17 pages supposedly written in English to illuminate form 1099Rs. And that is just one of a thousand forms that come into play for anything beyond the basic W-2 that you receive from your employer. Try selling some stock, for example, and see the rigmarole you have to go through to report it. Or even exchanging a parcel of land with your cousin. Or giving a gift to your alma mater in annuities.
This is the tax code is 11,000 pages long. The more lengthier and the more obtuse it is, the more it helps the pocketbooks and career prospects of those who write it, those who interpret it, those who enforce it, and those who litigate it. That would be respectively, your liberal members of Congress, your CPA, your IRS agent, and your tax attorney. It is little wonder that the tax code is a gold mine for those who have the money to hire members of Congress, CPAs, and tax lawyers to deal with thuggish bureaucrats every April or for those who happen to be the members of Congress, CPAs, tax lawyers, and said thuggish bureaucrats.
A nurse should be tending to her patients, not getting browbeaten by unscrupulous thugs paid for by her own money. There is simply no way to ‘reform’ a system that is so entrenched, so foul, and so sick. It is like a malignant tumor that to be removed and replaced with a graft of clean good tissue. That clean tissue is a tax system that is simple, smart, sophisticated, and rewards thrift and industry. Of the several reforms proposed over the years, the one that best meets this criteria is the one revolving around a national sales tax that will piggyback the states sales taxes already in vogue. Exempting some bare necessities like food, simple clothing, shelter, and medicine, we will be taxing consumption rather than income and saving. With a sales tax collection system already in place in 45 of the 50 states, only minor tweaks will be needed to extend the pipeline to the US treasury. In return, the IRS as we know it can be abolished and replaced with an agency one tenth its size. Sure, lots of bureaucrats and lobbyists will be out of a job and many CPAs and tax lawyers will see a downward adjustment in their lifestyles. So?
Thousands of bureaucrats looking for real jobs is a small price to pay for the restoration of that measure of liberty and sanity that is lost to the IRS each year. Nay, not a price, it is a bonus.