Posted on 04/22/2009 8:37:47 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Do you know what the word "income" means? My large Webster's dictionary is able to provide a clear and comprehensive definition in a mere 52 words. The shortest definition the Internal Revenue Service could provide in response to my request for its definition was 140 words - but the word income was included 10 times, missing the point that you do not include the word to be defined as part of the definition.
You may have read that President Obama has just appointed former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul A. Volcker to head a panel to make recommendations for tax reform. Its mandate is to simplify the tax code, raise more revenue, close loopholes, reduce the so-called tax gap - and not raise taxes for American families making less than $250,000. The panel will fail!
It will fail for the same reasons former President George W. Bush's efforts and other presidents' attempts at tax reform failed, and that is because the complexity in the tax code cannot be lessened without a reduction in rates and the overall tax burden. It will fail, too, because the income-tax code and regulations contain many inconsistent and even contradictory explicit and implicit definitions of the word income, leaving taxpayers both confused and endlessly at risk legally.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
That is why many of the tax- reform proposals being floated, such as higher marginal tax rates on small-business owners and even more restrictive depreciation limitations, are tax increases on the most productive and entrepreneurial people in society who have not yet amassed sufficient wealth to be part of the nonproductive political class.
Even though American corporations pay the highest corporate taxes in the world, the Washington political class wants to further restrict the deferral of foreign-source income and make it harder for them to operate across the globe. The result of these reform efforts will be to force more companies to downsize or move to other countries in order to become internationally competitive. The people who will be most hurt by those tax attacks on business will be the workers who will lose their jobs or face more limited future job opportunities. In the meantime, the Washington political class will continue to amass a larger share of the nation's income for itself - a sign of a nation in decline.
Knowledgeable people know the present income-tax system is irreparably broken and must be replaced with a more consumption-based tax system. More Band-Aids on the present income tax system will only result in more complexity, requiring even more police-state tactics in a futile attempt to enforce it.
The ‘command and control economy’ the ‘progressives’ desire cannot be achieved without a police state.
Small business are under attack. Guess how they will react (and cooperation ain’t on the list).
The IRS definition which amaze me are earned income and unearned income. Take a look at them.
I am beginning to have misgivings that the tax code will ever be meaningfully ‘reformed,’ though it may one day be destroyed and rebuilt.
Its becoming more and more obvious that the people are going to need to get out the pitchforks....
Manifest=Manifesto
“Knowledgeable people know the present income-tax system is irreparably broken and must be replaced with a more consumption-based tax system”
I’d like to see taxes disappear altogether, and watch the government bleed and die. Not that I think it’d necessarily work out. But I’d like to see it.
People seem to forget that, despite all the various interventions in the marketplace by various levels of government, the greatest period of economic expansion in U.S. history came in a period when we had no welfare, no income tax, no central bank, no real national defense, and very little police force.
Quit being an enabler for the state.
As for liberty, the present racket couldn’t be better. Every year more and more people become enemies of the system. It is the best recruit too there is. Why would we want it to stop? Liberty needs more rules, more taxes, more burdens. The more poor, miserable the people are, the more they will, slowly, painfully, dimly begin to question the system.
Pain is a great educator.
bump!
Actually, the mileage tax, using a GPS to track everyone's car, would be even more intrusive in some ways.
Hugh Hewitt and his colleague at Chapman University, Hank Adler have a new book out entitled “The Fair Tax Fantasy.”
See http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog/g/607c7589-1005-4b18-bfa5-e6c1e1398bb9
I would like to see a good refutation of the points made in it. According to them it looks like the fair tax has some major problems in practice.
Anytime in the past, prior to writing this book, when a caller advocated the Fair Tax, Hewitt would always disparage it and bring up the mortgage deduction.
Hewitt is compromised, so I can't accept his analysis with any credibility.
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