We have the most complicated progressive income tax system in the world, as well as the oldest one that requires its citizens to file annual reports. [Almost all other countries model their income tax systems after ours, including the UK and Revenue Canada].

The fault here doesn't lie with the IRS--the obvious object of blame.

It lies with the ballot box. And guess who was responsible for that? That's right: you.

Unless you want it to change and actually act towards getting it to change, it won't change. It's too political a hot-topic to "fix" the income tax system. There's too many goodies in there for political constituents to want to scrap the system and start over. Morever, the only real politically plausible solution--the Negative Income Tax, is so drastic a change that I don't think until the current crop of seniors is dead and buried would we even be able to start messing with it.

Thank Eisenhower/Nixon and Reagan for making the system so voluminous with forms (brought to you with the Internal Revenue Code of 1954). Subsequently, the Tax Reform Act of 1976 and the Tax Form Act of 1986 brought the current complexity we enjoy today [prior to this I believe Form 1040 still fit on one page and most Schedules were mostly one page].

Just understanding the various ways assets can be depreciated in the Tax Code boggles most laypeople's minds [have you ever Section 179'd a cow before??? I have!!] :o

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WHYY pays their CEO $750,000 a year. So WHYY should I renew my membership? Seems they have no problems finding money and spending it unwisely.


And this is why you should donate to PACCA, not PETA:

In September, PETA made headlines in Vermont and across the nation for asking Ben & Jerry's ice cream to use human breast milk in their ice cream, instead of cow milk

good, i just fired myself. all these years and I've thought it was someone else's job to mind the ballot box. please forward all campaign contributions to me, as I will now notify uncle sam that I am, eldondre, amresponsible for the ballot box. please also send me you letters of complaints about teh income tax ysstem as I wrote that in 1913 and have edited many times since then. mostly with the goal of dismantling the middle class by giving their incomes to rich and poor alike. in the 1930's I helped FDR get rid of annoying small businesses so that I coudl control just a few large ones in my efforts to rule the country with an iron fist. later, the code got so out fo hand I couldn't remember what was what so now I just write vague and contradictory laws so that companies have to hire tax laywers who still can't figure them out and just guess, hoping that the IRS can't figure them out either (not a bad assumption). the real benefit here is that I can decide after the fact what it is I meant to say to begin with. yes, that's right, I'm not only responsible for the ballot box, but the tax code itself.

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"You down wit OPM?"
Fumo: "Yeah, you know me!"

You do realize, eldondre, when I mean you, I refer to our passive-aggressive society that we have become, where we have softened from our acient abhorrent loathe of taxation we used to have in the Revolutionary days.

I'm not targeting you individual, per se.

Besides, I have so many other things that I blame you for. Why would I pick the IRS?

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WHYY pays their CEO $750,000 a year. So WHYY should I renew my membership? Seems they have no problems finding money and spending it unwisely.


And this is why you should donate to PACCA, not PETA:

In September, PETA made headlines in Vermont and across the nation for asking Ben & Jerry's ice cream to use human breast milk in their ice cream, instead of cow milk

Spot on!

I love hearing all of the folks who try to suggest a quick fix to the system. When you start asking "what about...?" the exemptions and deductions pile up pretty quickly.

There's a reason that Title 26 (our tax code) is one of the largest in the US Code. Thank Congress - for the last fifty years or so.

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www.taxgirl.com