The US Has More Tax Preparers Than Cops and Firemen Combined: Is It Time to Simplify the Tax Code?

I'm not jealous of successful people! 1%'s are just people.

Equal sacrifice.

You shouldn't have to hire someone to do your taxes, it's rediculous.

Bureaucracy is ridiculously complex and gets more so over time. It all needs to be simplified about 100x maybe more.

Are you thinking we should square root that sucker?

Sounds like a GREAT idea

BUT... It will NEVER happen, because too many politicians have their hands in the Cookie Jar.

Revising the code to be simpler, would cause those politicians to have to pull back their hands.

Unless they just simplify it so that only those who make $30K to $300K pay taxes - and everyone else is exempt - including those who make income via investments. Increasing those amounts for inflation every year. THAT Congress would buy off on.

..... if you were a Congressman/Senator would you give away the Goose ?

Who creates all the Tax Shelters/Loopholes, who writes the Code .... Lobbies/Corporations or Bribed Politicians ?

A Flat Tax is always touted as ' Giving the rich a even lower tax rate ' and anyone with a brain knows that statement is B S.

A Flat Tax would likely raise Warren Buffets rate ..... it would also mean that the Freeloaders who currently pay nothing would have to start paying ... ahem .... " Their Share "

............ whoops, we damn sure don't want that to happen, the Freeloaders will revolt !

And the dems would spew demonization of a tax increase on the poor. That would be all you heard through election season, and people would bite on the bait too.

.... you got it my friend, you got it !

So if you're at the helm and you'd like to continue the bribes, continue the strife and ensure no unity what do you do .... ' They aren't paying their Fair Share '

.......... easy as that.

Be real funny if Romney took that Harry Reid tax BS and blew it back in the faces of folks like Maddow or Sawyer and said .... ' What's your salary and just how much have you paid in Income Tax ' ..... fwiw, Sawyer makes $ 12 mill per year and Maddow about 2 mill per year.

Intoler....I find it so difficult to write a comment while looking into your cute baby face. What was the question? O Who cares.....

..... each morn I stare into the mirror for a couple secs and remind myself just how cute I am .... then reality knocks me on my empty noggin < s >

I swear; I look at your pic and just melt away.

.... no, I'm not putting you in the Will .... maybe the Christmas Card List, if postage doesn't go through the roof < s >

I want to kiss you on your forehead. Please!

We need a simple, realistic, incorruptible tax system. The current one encourages lying.

I am for a flat tax, like the one Dick Armey had several years ago.

and have an increase in unemployment

.... how would that occur ?

Because we'd have to get rid of IRS agents. Since they are unionized Im sure they have lobbiests fighting for their jobs as we speek.

..... not necessarily Laid-Off.

IRS Agents could be utilized to police the Black Market .... of course that's figuring that we actually wanted to address the problem.

Or audit federal agencies like DOE,EPA,Pentagon, federal reserve

..... that could work.

I would simply apply some sort of attrition into the equation in some areas, although we are kidding ourselves if we don't actually gut some Programs + Agencies .... we simply cannot afford them.

Now that's fighting language. Where is Louisa when we need her? Fight on....

My response to you would have little merit base on your questions premise

We also have more lawyers then doctors.

Obama believes doctors make too much and lawyers don't

Obamaism in action.

NOBAMA2012

That's what I'm talkin' bout.

NOBAMA 2012

We should exempt everyone making less than about $250,000 from the income tax altogether, and leave the essentials of our tax scheme relatively untouched for those who have incomes above that level – the income tax should be an excise on privileged (passive) income, as it was meant to be. In 1913, poor and middle-class Americans did not intend to ratify themselves or their posterity out of 1/3 or more of their weekly paychecks; that's not 'income', that's remuneration.

I'd also eliminate the death tax on, perhaps, the first $3 million of an estate, so no working person has the government take away from their spouse or children that for which they've worked their entire lives.

The more money we allow working people to keep, the less we'll have redistribution after the fact, and the nanny state that accompanies it.

What you wrote is redistribution.

so you are saying, when a farm owner passes. his farm should be broken up and sold? To pay these taxes?

And that to avoid paying taxes noone should seek to make more the 250K? great incentive.

So you are saying Gates, Jobs, etc are evil?

would that also make Obama, Clinton, the kennedys, the buffetts of the world are evil?

Should those not paying taxes decide were the tax money goes?

I believe there are already contries like that and they are in serious financial problems

Your program really sucks

BUT IT ISTHE OBAMA VISION so

NOBAMA 2012

I wouldn't call it the Obama vision at all, I'd call it something akin to 'original intent'. Very few working people paid the income tax prior to WW2, when the government began their system of wage withholding under the auspices of 'helping to defeat the Axis'.

I mentioned nothing at all about redistribution, except for a way to uproot as much of it as possible and to shrink government in the process. Yours is the kind of Orwellian doublespeak for which the Republicans have unfortunately become famous.

Nor did I call anybody 'evil' – what in the world are you talking about here? I understand Obama and Buffet at least have come out in support of higher taxes on the wealthy, themselves included, but I don't care what either of them think. I'm rendering my own appraisal, and I'm not even suggesting higher taxes on the rich. I'm suggesting eliminating those for which the working class is presently liable, so that those who do pay taxes can perhaps even pay less in taxes, as the working class gains the means to provide for themselves in the first instance.

I'm sorry that allowing people to provide for themselves and eliminating the need for nursing from the federal teat seems radical to you, my friend.

I look at the numbers since Obama took offTice, huge increases in food stamps, welfare , and more in poverty. perhaps you have different numbers. and will you share this information with me?

scroll up to your last comment, last paragraph

If Obama and buffett wanted to pay higher taxes they could have. but being the weak people they are they demand they be forced to do what they claim is thier fair share, why is that . (US tax form has a place where those that wish to pay down the debt can do so by simply checking the box, and writing the check, maybe to hard for them? I ask you, why would a man declare that he will not do what he says is the right thing to do unless forced to? and is that leadership to you? maybe excuses and blame are also leadership to you? Listen to Obamas rants, Is that him or the side effects of meth use that he admits to , wrote of. ?

Obamas incemtive for government dependency is pretty attractive

look at what LBJs, , the liberal great society provides through welfare, housing, food, cars, cell phones, and a taxpayer funded debit card good at casinos, strip clubs, and liquor stores. To many that is an acceptable lifestyle. and no drug testing. cannot beat that.

I am for a productive America, not a dependent America.

there are plenty of countries with the agenda you like, most of Europe. cuba, the list is long. you should show your true colors and move there.

NOBAMA 2012

I think you may have misunderstood his point, not to grow govt but rather to stop funding it. He doesnt support an increase on the top tier, and has stated the need to get off the teet. It sounds very libertarian. Not liberal.

who?

Philo-Publius, the fellow you replied to. I just looked at his profile and it does say libertarian, so I doubt he has much regard for barry

Ahh, a person who finally gets it. Govt shrinkage thru less taxation, unfortunately our govt has a bad habit of borrowing. If we could just get them off the teet as well.

..... would only work if all Freebie Programs ceased.

My main disagreement would be on the death tax, there should be none whatsoever. Its just another way for gov to retax what they have already taxed and retaxed

I appreciate your thoughts on it, and that's a valid point.

Also, you're right about me coming at this primarily from a libertarian viewpoint – I lean left, mostly because I think strongly supporting labor is the only thing that can get us out of this fine, big-government mess we're in (to me pro-labor laws and/or reigning in corporations are far preferable to a monstrous government apparatus), but am a libertarian at my core.

You're right though, it is tax on top of tax, and that just adds another point of government contact/extraction. I'll be happy to reconsider that point.