THE TAXPAYER IN ME ASKS WHY

The U. S. Government printing office says that for the price of $967 they will print and ship title 26 to you post paid. The average citizen knows title 26 as the 16,845 pages of the internal revenue code. The federal government also estimates that American citizens spend 5.4 billion hours each year trying to comply with title 26 and its 721 unique forms. The federal government mandates a minimum wage of $7.25/hour must be paid to the people who work for a business. 5.4 billion hours of work each year at the minimum wage rate says that the government is using at least $39.15 billion dollars worth of our time without compensation. The average federal income tax paid by a U.S. taxpayer is less than 10%. The taxpayer in me asks why we have an income tax rate above 39%.

My arithmetic shows that if every person earning income in the United States paid an 11% flat tax the government could pay all of its bills, pay the interest on the national debt and have money left over to reduce the debt. The opponents of the flat tax wail about the unfairness of a flat tax without all of the carefully constructed tax rules and progressive tax rates crafted to redistribute wealth. If a flat tax is applied with no deductions or exemptions the title 26 tax code would fit on the top half of one page. We would not need to calculate our tax return or worry about keeping records and receipts. There would be no opportunity for billionaires to exempt income and end up paying no taxes.  Person “A”, that earned ten times as much income as person ”B”, would pay ten times as much in taxes. The taxpayer in me asks why we put up with spending 5.4 billion hours a year complying with a tax code that isn’t fair to the citizens in any way. I have spent my entire working life finding solutions to problems so that my customers can save money making their products while making a profit. It appears to me that the only reasonable course to take is to simplify the tax code and save the time and money. The taxpayer in me asks why we don’t do this.

History shows that we as a country have never followed such an obvious course so maybe the people making the decisions are not trying to solve this problem for the American people. Is it possible that the people in Washington D.C. who sell their influence and the rest of the people in Washington D.C. that are buying that influence don’t want to solve the problem? Senators and Representatives often talk about simplifying the tax code but it never happens. The very complexity of the tax code creates an enormous opportunity for special interest lobbyists in Washington. Given the large campaign war chests amassed by incumbents from special interest lobbyists and the companies they represent I think that we can correctly surmise why the tax code exists as it does. I submit that if we look at what our elected officials do instead of listening to what they say we may find the answer. Most tax payers do not even know that when the sixteenth amendment to the constitution was passed to allow the collection of federal income tax it was capped at 7%. That is correct, the Constitution was amended to allow tax collection, the original Constitution forbade the collection of such a tax by the federal government. How is it possible that we have the current mess of a tax system given the original wording of the law? The tax payer in me asks who is profiting from this terrible system. Maybe we should consider whether electing trial lawyers and career politicians to congress to solve the country’s problems is the wrong approach. Should we substitute professionals at problem solving for our current crop of ineffective legislators and executives? We might try people like doctors, military commanders, engineers and fire fighters. All of these professions have one thing in common, they must solve problems or they lose their jobs. Doctors that can’t help their patients soon don’t have any. Fire fighters that can’t put a fire out soon need to learn how to do another job etc. It also might be a good idea to eliminate campaign contributions from business and labor unions. If campaigns were funded solely by individuals and then capped to a small enough amount so that no one could buy influence we might again have government by “we the people”. Unfortunately relying on career politicians to reform the tax code or campaign financing is like asking the fox to guard the hen house. The taxpayer in me asks why we put up with all of the corruption in D.C.