My complaints with the current system are numerous. To name a few: 1) The burden of compliance is expensive. Consider the hours spent by everyone doing their tax returns and planning for taxes. 2) The qualifications for receiving direct payments from the govt. is convoluted. There are hundreds of programs aimed at helping the poor (no beef with helping the poor), but for each one a person has to meet certain parameters. If the idea is to make poor people not poor anymore, just cut them a check for enough money to get them over the poverty line and get rid of those hundreds of programs. 3) Federal Income tax is a violation of our civil liberties. It's no business of the government to monitor our personal finances. 4) I wouldn't wish an IRS audit on anyone. See this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax They propose a 23% sales tax, which is not the same thing as a VAT. Their rebates are not flat. They seem interested in keeping around those hundreds of govt. programs to accomplish the same objective. And see this: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/governments/cb10-131.html Entitlement programs Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security comprised 45.7 percent of all funding, or $1.5 trillion. Other direct payments (e.g., housing assistance, unemployment compensation, Medicare) made up 23.6 percent of the federal spending at $762.9 billion. (that adds up to 69.3% of all spending as direct payments to individuals) Salaries and wages for federal employees accounted for $299.4 billion (9.2 percent) of all federal spending. (that would make it 78.5% of all spending as direct payments to individuals) Total obligations for two major welfare programs — Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (previously known as the food stamp program) — reached $68.4 billion in 2009, a 31.7 percent increase. (About 81% of all spending...) &c
I don't really believe that only 10% of Federal government spending goes to government employees. But even if it did, the other 90% of recipients would soon need less, because an economy without interest payments to China would make prices cheaper. And then there's a leftist solution. The top 2% of Americans could make half of what they make now. You hog over half the money in the country. The method would be more than taxes--it would be to change customs of overpayment in the culture, to bring us to world norms. Eventually the intelligence agencies will install emergency measures like this, permanently. I think maybe in 50 years.
Speaking of debt to china... http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/256199/obama-not-always-fan-upping-debt-ceiling-katrina-trinko
Looking at the comments at the bpttom...Good idea, to require that posters add 7 + 13. You should have a similar IQ check here before anyone can post. We could significantly cut down this board so I'd have time to read it all. For this board? Better keep it to single digits. Don't go over 9 + 9. As for the second post calling for tax simplification, that will never happen unless the economy itself is simplified. A tax code must describe its economic system. It must wrap its definition of income around the juggernaut of ways to make and hide that income. If it doesn't tax some particular kind of income, that income is a shelter, and everyone puts their money into that economic activity until the definition is changed.
The tax code doesn't describe the economy, it somewhat defines it. A business keeps 3 sets of books! One to show investors (lots of profits!), one to show the IRS (not so much profits!), and one to show the actual state of the business (to make proper decisions from). What a mess. There are huge organizations selling drugs or other illegal things outside the tax system. A part of the economy (they spend on things). Not taxed. They'd pay taxes if they had to pay the 20% at the cash register.
