Lower and simplify taxes! ~ By John Stossel

Today, April 15, is a very special day! It's tax day! While 47% of the population don't pay any taxes, the rest of us, both individuals and corporations, must spend hours upon hours just filling out the tax forms, only to find out how much we get to pay to Uncle Barry. (Uncle Sam has now retired. He didn't like what kind of changes were coming to transform America.)

In his column, Stossel illuminates the kind of burden of time and cost it takes to get through all the complexities of the tax law. Does it not seem like a huge waste of productive time and money that could be used for other things? But, hey, I guess the tax attorneys and accountants really don't mind at all!

What are we to do? Some people say scrap the income tax for the Fair Tax, a national sales tax. Others want a flat income tax of, maybe, 17 percent. One form; no deductions.

There's always danger in proposing a replacement for the income tax: We could end up with two taxes. I wouldn't put it past our greedy Congress to promise that a national sales tax – or worse, a value-added tax – would replace the income tax and then, once the new taxes are in place, to say that the need for revenue is so great they must retain the income tax, too.

Let's not take our eye off the ball: lower and much simpler taxes.

By John Stossel

Posted: April 14, 2010 ~ 1:00 am Eastern

© 2010

It's that joyous time of year: income-tax time. So I spend time with my accountant. I don't want to see him, but I must. I could not do what he's doing. The tax code has grown so complex that today most Americans hire someone to do their taxes.

For the money I pay my accountant, I could get a hundred massages. I could buy a fancy motorcycle. I could take a cruise ship to Venice and back.

Better yet, I could do some good in the world. I could pay for two Habitat for Humanity homes

or help three kids escape government schools by paying their tuition at a good Catholic school.

What a shame that I pay my accountant instead.

How'd we get to this point? U.S taxes were once simple! The government funded itself on tariffs and excise taxes. It didn't violate our privacy by asking us how much we made or how many dependents we have.

But in 1913, the politicians decided they needed an income tax.

At first, they took little money: just 1 percent on incomes between $20,000 and $50,000. Those were big incomes – adjusted for inflation, $50,000 is $1.1 million today. The top bracket paid 6 percent, but that only applied to people who earned at least $11 million. Anyone who made less than $400,000 paid no income tax.

But leave the amounts aside. The increase in complexity is just as evil.

In 1913, the first tax form and instructions totaled four simple pages. Today's 1040, with instructions, totals 176 pages. How did this happen? Because politicians win votes by giving gifts to favored groups.

On my FBN show tomorrow, I'll show clips of the pandering legislators applauding themselves for offering tax credits to special interests. The favored groups cheer their tax breaks, but the result is that everyone else pays more, and everyone must spend more time deciphering the rules.

And with every credit, the tax code gets more complicated. The code is now 3,784,745 words long, not counting the 2009 and 2010 changes. It will get worse in the future.

Americans spend more than 7 billion hours trying to comply, according to a forthcoming study from the National Taxpayers Union.

"That is the equivalent of 3.7 million employees working 40-hour weeks year-round without any vacation. That's more workers than are employed at the five biggest employers among Fortune 500 companies," writes David Keating in the NTU study.

"Counting time and money for individual taxpayers, the compliance burden would total an incredible $103 billion for individual taxpayers alone."

READ FULL STORY at WorldNetDaily.com

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