Posted on 01/13/2010 3:32:52 AM PST by Man50D
The commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, Douglas Shulman, told C-SPAN on Sunday that he uses a tax preparer to do his federal income tax return because he finds the tax code too complex to handle the job himself.
“I use a preparer,” Shulman told C-SPAN anchor Steve Scully on the network’s Newsmakers program. "I've used one for years. I find it convenient. I find the tax code complex, so I use a preparer.”
Scully followed up by asking Shulman, “How would you make it easier? How would you make it less complex?”
Shulman said: "I don't write the tax laws. Congress writes the tax laws so that's a whole different discussion."
The U.S. tax code currently is over 67,000 pages.
Later in the program, Scully returned to the issue of the IRS commissioner using a tax preparer to do his taxes. “I want to go back to the earlier point about you use a preparer to file your taxes,” said Scully. “What does that tell you about the complexities of the tax code and as you indicated Congress writes the law, not you, what would you tell Congress to try to make it simpler so more people can file their own returns?”
Shulman responded that he is a “big fan” of simplifying the tax code.
“Yeah, first of all, I wouldn’t read much into what I do personally with my taxes,” said Shulman. “I’ve had a preparer that I like, I trust, and has filed my taxes accurately for 10 years and so I just use that preparer. So, I wouldn’t say that has any broad implications.”
“Regarding simplification of the taxes laws, I for a long time have been a big fan of simplification,” said Shulman. “The easier it is for people to understand the tax code, the more compliant they’ll be and so I think anything that can be done to simplify the tax laws is certainly good for the IRS.
“I think it’s good for the country,” added Shulman. “The president’s been vocal about this as has the [Treasury] secretary. So I think it’s apple pie and motherhood to simply for the tax laws. You know, I think it’s difficult to do so, but we’ll see where things go in the next couple years.”
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner failed to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes earlier this decade and apologized to Congress for that failure during his confirmation process.
Geithner told the Senate Finance Committee on Jan. 21 that he prepared some of his tax returns on his own with a tax-preparation computer program. He had later made up for the taxes he initially failed to pay.
"These were careless mistakes," he said, as reported by the Associated Press. "They were avoidable mistakes.”
"But they were unintentional," he said. "I should have been more careful."
“My point was, and remains, that politicians can and will implement changes to the Fair Tax that will alter it’s execution so that it does not reflect the original intent.”
That objection is not specific to the FairTax, but could, in fact, be applied to any tax reform proposal.
Is that your position - that you defend the current tax system because any attempt to reform it could be sabotaged by congressmen/women who don’t share the goals of the reform measure?
“MORE IMPORTANTLY, changing the tax collection method does not solve the problem we face today with
1) Congress spending more than it takes in”
Agreed - the FairTax does not address that problem
“and 2) Congress segmenting the People into different tax buckets and instituting class warfare via the tax code.”
Yes, it does, as long as the Fairtax is implemented as designed. I will concede that this is a tough thing to do, but that is why we need massive public pressure.
“To me, fixing those issues is far more important that changing how we collect taxes.”
However, you have left out a raft of other problems which the current tax code exacerbates and the FairTax addresses:
1. The federal budget deficit (to the extent that slower economic growth in addition to lack of spending restraint contributes to it)
2. the trade deficit
3. the ongoing increases in complexity of the current tax system and consequent increases in compliance costs
4. the crisis in SS & Medicare
5. Our extremely low savings rate
And how does one make all income taxes unconstitutional? An income tax is nothing more than a species of excise tax, which would suggest that you are going to have to make all excise taxes unconstitutional, which essentially means going back to the Articles of Confederation, which we already know were a failure. That’s not a really wise course in my estimation.
My objection is not with, for or against the Fair Tax, Flat tax or any other tax collection method. My objection is that the SYSTEMIC problems that are far more damaging to the economy are not being address. Fixing the flat tires on my car does not help when the engine is not running, the transmission wont get out of first gear and the axles are broken. There is a vocal group of Fair Tax proponents that are selling the Fair Tax as the end all, be all solution to all problems - which it is NOT.
For example, I often hear Fair Tax proponents claim that the Fair Tax will “starve the government of funds” .... NOTHING IS FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH.
Again, I neither support nor oppose Fair Tax. Just like any tax collection method, there are pros (simplicity) there are neutrals (most likely will be changed from how it is designed, but that is with any method) and cons. Many people argue over the small stuff. X beats Y because of Z. And that is fair debate. But I will continue to caution that until the systemic problems are fixed with Congress, then it really does not matter which flavor of tax collection is implemented.
LLSS ;^>
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