Taxation

Taxation

 

In “Julius Caesar”, Act I, Scene 1, William Shakespeare wrote “Beware the Ides of March…”, but it is the “ides” of April which terrorize and traumatize taxpayers across the country. April 15th, the day Federal Tax Returns are due, is a day in which no tax-paying citizen can cherish. We should know. All told, we paid just under $39,000 in income and income-based taxes, and we only earn in the five figures, which means that, taken together- Federal, Social Security, State, Medicare, etc., almost 49% of what we earned got gobbled up by the government, at one level or another- and that does not include the sales taxes we pay when we purchase anything, or the real estate taxes on our home, or the personal property taxes on our automobile. Is that fair? If you say yes, then you are either an idiotic socialist who believes we did not earn that money, despite the fact that we have been working our fat keister off since we were a teenager, or you believe that we are merely a slave to the government, and not an individual who is guaranteed the pursuit of happiness, as stated in the Declaration of Independence.

 

Okay- enough of our personal rant, except to say that we, as a nation, are over-taxed…WAAAAYYYY over-taxed. When one considers the tens of thousands of pages of tax code that exists here in the United States, such an enormous kluster-phuck of confiscatory and, in some cases, exculpatory tax code is, by definition, inherently corrupt. Were it not so complex, it would not be corrupt, either.

 

The various lobbies- in particular the CPA lobby, the ABA lobby, the tax attorney lobby are what is getting in the way of tax reform. Why? They want it to be as complex, corrupt and kluster-phucked as possible because the more complex, corrupt and kluster-phucked it is, the more business they can generate, as a result of it being so.

 

The fact that the average American needs professional help, in preparing his/her tax return, bears witness to this inherent corruption. It should be as easy as reporting one’s income, reporting one’s withheld taxes, indicating the tax actually owed from a table, and either sending or receiving a check to make up the difference- all on the back of a postcard, BUT that would endanger the livelihoods of CPAs, attorneys (particularly tax attorneys) and their continued greasing of the hands of politicians in Washington will ensure evermore complication and kluster-phuck with every passing tax year- that is, unless REAL change is made.

 

Then, again, there is the IRS targeting of conservative organizations applying for 501(c)(4) tax exemptions, originally and falsely blamed on rogue operatives in the IRA Cincinnati office, which have now been traced to the IRS Headquarters in Washington. The former Commissioner of the IRS, Doug Shulman, went to the White House 138 times during his tenure- when the targeting was going on but, in Congressional testimony, said that he could only recall an Easter egg hunt as the reason for one of these visits- and could not remember why he went there on the other 137 occasions. Then two years after Lois Lerner’s e-mails were subpoenaed by Congress, these e-mails suddenly have vanished into thin air, due to a hard drive crash, and the subsequent disposal of the computer’s hard drive conveniently waylaying and preventing investigation into e-mails the Lerner had sent to government entities outside the Treasury Department- e-mails which might otherwise have revealed IRS communication to other government entities, like OSHA and the FBI, which also launched investigations into businesses run by taxpayers who supported these same conservative organizations. Also noteworthy was the fact that seven other IRS officials, being tied to the IRS abuse scandals, also somehow had the ‘misfortune” of hard drive crashes and lost e-mails. All the while, Obama insists that there is “not smidgen of corruption” in this arena. Well, this wouldn’t be the first time President Obama has played fast and loose with the truth and it won’t be the last, either.

 

So what to do? Eliminate all income taxes. Eliminate all estate taxes (which fall particularly hard on family businesses and family farms). Eliminate entirely the corporate tax which, at its current level, is the world’s highest (which is why so much of our wealth is disappearing overseas). Eliminate all forms of taxes, as they exist today, and replace them all with consumption taxes. The rich will pay more taxes, because the rich buy more products and services, and tax consumption at every level so that there is no exemption and no way of getting around the consumption taxes. If the rich choose to try to circumvent this consumption tax by purchasing their products overseas, then they can also pay the import duties when they bring these goods back to the United States. This would, by design, ensure that everyone, EVERYONE pays “their fair share” and would also ensure that a progressive tax system (meaning the rich pay more) applies to everyone, with no exceptions, no loopholes, no deductions and, at long last, no tax return preparation….and NO IRS (as we know it, today).

 

The candidate and the party who espouses this will have our vote in 2016. And we hope that such a candidate and party has your vote, too.

 

-Drew Nickell, 17 April 2015

 

©2015, by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved