Free Republic

President Barack Obama is eyeing a 2012 campaign modeled on President Harry Truman’s 1948 successful re-election campaign against Congress. First, however, the White House will send to Capitol Hill an assortment of ‘economy-boosting’ legislation in a package that may include a major overhaul of the tax code. “I’ll be putting forward, when they come back in September, a very specific plan to boost the economy, to create jobs, and to control our deficit,” Obama told a friendly audience at a Decorah, Minnesota campaign-event on Monday. “My attitude is, get it done … [but] if they don’t get it done, then...

How many pages does it take to lay out the insanely complicated rules and requirements of our tax code? According to tax publisher CCH, the total number of pages devoted to federal tax code rules, IRS rulings, and regulations has grown to 72,536:It's no wonder that even the government's own experts and officials can't figure it out. Any system of rules that requires in excess 72,000 pages to explain and understand borders on useless. At this point it might as well be Calvinball. Via Cato's Chris Edwards.

This year, for the first time in more than a decade, I ventured outside the reassuring realm of TurboTax while preparing my return, looking for a late-arriving form at the IRS website. It's scary out there. Staring at bewildering forms and instructions, I flashed back to the days when I did my taxes by hand, based on my uncertain understanding of what was required, and hoped for the best -- "the best" being a future free of audits, interest on back taxes, liens, fines and prison. Although clever software has helped shield me from the infuriating, nerve-wracking complexity that the...

So you have just finished preparing your income taxes, but did you understand the tax code? If you said yes, you do not know what you do not know. The U.S. tax code has become so long, complex, contradictory and devoid of common sense that no one can fully understand it - and this includes tax professionals and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) personnel. Can honorable persons of good conscience harass, fine and even imprison their fellow citizens for an alleged violation of laws and regulations they themselves do not completely know? But that is a topic for another column. Tax...

The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee wants to cut the top U.S. tax rate to 25% for individuals and corporations, and cut or eliminate many popular deductions. View Full Image Getty Images The tax-overhaul plan form House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, left, would be designed to be revenue neutral overall. .The odds of quick action appear slender. But the move, from Rep. Dave Camp (R., Mich.), is significant as a marker in what will likely be a multiyear debate over revamping the tax code. The plan also provides Republicans with a position to pitch in...

The existence of the ObamaCare provision that forces every American, regardless of income, ability or personal preference to purchase a qualifying health insurance policy has been well reported, little attention has been paid to a similar mandate that will be far more wide-reaching, far costlier, and far more destructive to the attempts by hard-working Americans to protect their wealth. The provision in question comes in the form of a few seemingly minor alterations to the tax code, specifically Section 6041 dealing with the reporting of income on Form 1099. The newly enacted amendments force business owners to send out millions...

If the tax code were straightforward and simple, April 15 would be just another lovely spring date. But as April 15 approaches like an incoming monsoon, millions of Americans brace for the pain of writing checks to the IRS. Even worse, this annual discomfort begins even earlier, as taxpayers generate a cyclone of documents just to calculate their tax liability. America’s excruciatingly complex tax-compliance regime deepens the aggravation of sending hard-earned cash to Washington for virtual incineration by Congress. Completing tax forms required 7.75 billion hours of human labor in fiscal year 2008, according to the latest RegInfo.gov data. That...

Yes, it's that time of year when most of us begin the arduous task of completing our 2009 income tax returns. I just received a tax-planning memo from my accountant highlighting the new tax credits available under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Along with a listing and description of these credits, such as First Time Homebuyer, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and Alternative or Electric Drive Motor Vehicle, my CPA added this comment: I can't refrain from getting on the proverbial soapbox to point out that the Internal Revenue Code is no longer a body of tax...

"The power to tax is the power to destroy." - Chief Justice John Marshall The US tax code is a marvelous and impressive intellectual structure. As an engineer I took a business class in taxation for corporations while getting my MBA. Engineering is the art of extracting utility from first principles of science and combining it with hard-won practical experience. I found, to my frustration, that taxation is not like that. Taxes are whatever Congress and the IRS say they are, logic or principle be damned. Tax codes are often written to support national goals, above and beyond mere revenue...

Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30TH, 2009 AT 5:59 AM Streaming at 12:30: PERAB Meeting on Tax Reform Posted by Austan Goolsbee Today, the tax subgroup of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB) will hold a meeting to gather ideas on tax reform. It will be the first of several such meetings. The meeting will center on tax simplification and will be live streamed at www.whitehouse.gov/live. I wanted to take the opportunity to explain why we assembled this subgroup, what areas the PERAB tax reform subgroup will focus on...

Not even three months into his presidency, Barack Obama already has developed a nasty habit of making grandiose promises and proposals, doing precisely the opposite of what he says and celebrating his hypocrisy and insincerity as a policy triumph. Keep lobbyists out his administration? That lasted a couple of days. Lead a new era of fiscal responsibility? His agenda will run up budget deficits that George W. Bush couldn't have dreamed of. No tax increases of any kind for households earning less than $250,000 per year? He signed off on a huge cigarette tax hike that will pummel the poor....

Mending America’s broken tax code Published: April 13 2009 19:16 | Last updated: April 13 2009 19:16 The approach of tax-filing day on April 15 invariably lowers spirits in the United States. Many taxpayers expect a refund when they have finished their calculations, but even this does little to improve the mood. The system’s surreal complexity is enough to defeat candidates for senior positions in the Treasury, let alone Joe the Plumber. Struggling with it arouses the suspicion that the income tax code is chiefly an instrument of political repression – a reminder of who is in charge. Ceaseless meddling...

MORE than anything else, business needs a predictable environment if it is to create jobs. Changes in the regulatory environment and the tax code make it almost impossible for businesses to make investments. Yet President Obama seems to ignore this reality. Each day's news brings another bold and far-reaching proposal to change the fundamentals of the US economy. And each time he indulges his personal ideology with such a pronouncement, businesses all over the world cut back on their planned investment until the dust settles. Most incredible was the fact that he chose the middle of a deep recession to...

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The White House Wednesday announced a new task force headed by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker to reform the Byzantine US tax code in the hope of recouping billions in lost revenue. White House budget chief Peter Orszag said Volcker and four other top economists will report their recommendations back to President Barack Obama by December 4, and their review will cover three main areas. "One is tax simplification, the second is closing tax loopholes and reducing tax evasion, and the third is reducing corporate welfare," the director of the Office of Management and Budget told...

“Let's take a look at the top 1 percent, the truly "evil" in the Obama-Pelosi-Reid worldview. According to the IRS, they earn about 20 percent of the income in America, but pay 40 percent of the income tax. The top 5 percent pay 60 percent of the income tax. The top 10 percent pay 70 percent of the income tax.”

For Dale Allee, a second-generation cattle rancher in southern Colorado, the idiom that nothing is certain but death and taxes is now a reality. "I just turned 80 last week. You know what that means? That means I'm not going to be around here very long, and somebody's going to have to pay those taxes," said Allee, who fears federal estate taxes will thwart his plans to pass his 4,200-acre Pueblo County ranch to his children. Land-rich but cash poor, Western ranchers are lobbying Washington to exempt them from the estate tax, which can force heirs to sell their inheritance...

Think that class warfare and mindless anti-business hatred don’t have real-life consequences? Think again: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Much political hay has been made in Congress about “unpatriotic” corporations that move operations abroad. Weatherford International is the latest, taking its headquarters from Houston to Switzerland. The oil services company said that it wants to be closer to its markets. But what it really meant was that it no longer saw the future in the U.S. In a political atmosphere of blaming corporations, it’s no wonder. Halliburton fled to Dubai in 2007. Tyco International, Foster Wheeler and Transocean International all went to Switzerland. As...

Lou Dobbs Tonight -- CNN -- November 14 "They're using identities of American citizens and the IRS is allowing it to happen." Casey Wian: More than 1,300 illegal aliens near Greeley, Colorado, have been using either stolen or phony Social Security numbers to receive at least $2.5 million in tax refunds, according to local law enforcement officials. (unbelievalbe video clip) Chief Jerry Garner, Greeley PD: These folks that are here illegally are victimizing American citizens by stealing their identity. Very, very often they are victimizing American citizens who are Latino. John Cooke, Weld County Sheriff: They're using identities of American...

Housing Numbers Were Skewed, Lehman Says (RTTNews) - Housing starts were biased higher in June due to a change in the building code in New York City, observe the analysts at Lehman Brothers. Starts jumped 9.1% to 1.066 million in June as multi-family construction in the Northeast surged 102.6%. Effective July 1, the 421-a tax incentive program for multi-family construction in NYC will expire, encouraging builders to rush to start construction. This also pushed up permits for multi-family construction in the Northeast, which jumped 73%, as developers rushed to lay foundation after receiving permits. We expect a reversal in multi-family...

SACRAMENTO -- One severely broken part of California's state government is the tax code. It's antiquated and unreliable. Government financing is too heavily dependent on the rich, who have good and bad years, causing roller-coaster tax trauma in the Capitol. And there isn't enough help from the creaky old sales tax. The volatility of the tax system keeps getting worse, making it increasingly difficult for policymakers to plan ahead. New Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) has taken up the cause and is bent on creating an independent blue-ribbon commission to overhaul the tax code. "The economic crisis is national,...