CAUTION: If, during 2015, you were an eligible trade adjustment assistance (TAA) recipient, an alternative TAA (ATAA) recipient, re-employment TAA (RTAA) recipient, or Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) pension recipient, you must reduce your insurance premiums by any amounts used to figure the health coverage tax credit. See the instructions for Line 1 . . . .
--Instructions for something or another taken from IRS.gov
OKAY, that was supposed to be a joke. Or the beginning of a joke. You know, to show Gentle Reader how ridiculous the federal tax code has become. The above few sentences come from instructions from an actual document the feds have put online this year. The problem was, about a third of the way through, we realized the joke was on us--all of us taxpayers--and it wasn't funny.
Try it yourself. IRS.gov has many word-filled and number-filled pages of this kind of stuff. And all kinds of documents and instructions and forms for your entertainment. Pick a couple and see if you can get through two whole pages without your eyes glazing over. This jargon put out by the Internal Revenue Service and Department of Saturday Sudokus surpasseth all understanding. Which may be the only thing it has in common with the peace of God.
(In case you haven't heard by now, but might like to, Friday was a federal holiday in the federal city--we now call it Washington, D.C.--so the usual April 15 deadline was extended to today.)
Though they might complain loudly enough, most Americans aren't anti-tax. They know that good roads, modern schools, and stealthy battleships aren't conjured out of thin air. But does it have to be so difficult to pay those taxes? Talk about rubbing salt into the wound. If the government is going to compel us all to fork over hard-earned money, shouldn't it make things easier?
Every April, Americans are told to not only fill out the proper tax forms, understand all the instructions, and make the correct payment to the government--but sign and swear that all is in proper order on penalty of perjury!
On penalty of perjury. Some of us wouldn't bet a nickel that we'd have everything right on our tax forms. But to throw jail in as an option?
No wonder most Americans use an accountant, a tax preparer or at least a computer program to handle the job. It might help ordinary taxpayers sleep o' night to pay the extra fee so that said preparer deals with the IRS in case of an audit. After all, after reading some of those instructions, would you want to swear to anything without professional backup?
And who is supposed to tell us whether we're an "eligible trade adjustment assistance (TAA) recipient"? Do they put a notice in the mail?
The IRS has agents on standby to help, of course. But reports in recent years showed that the IRS can't answer most of the calls, much less all of them. And when help is on the line, even top officials with the IRS call customer service "abysmal." (Their word.) So if you're lucky enough to get through on the phone, you might not even get the right advice. From the IRS.
And you're supposed to pledge everything on your tax form is right? Again, on the penalty of perjury.
SO WHAT'S the answer? Here's one: Don't mend it, end it. Abolish the tax code and start over. The Internal Revenue Code doesn't need to be changed. Take it behind the barn and kill it with an ax. But give the federal government some time to come up with a simple, fair substitute for the current code. And give Congress and the president a deadline. Say, how about by Dec. 31? That would be incentive enough. And they'd have to come up with a better tax code, because this one would be gone.
Even a flat tax, if it didn't start till incomes reached, say, $30,000 a year, might be fairer than the monster we've got on our hands now. Even formerly communist countries in eastern Europe have flat taxes on incomes. Even, would you believe it, Russia.
Speaking of now . . . . Now, we're told, is no time to fiddle with the tax system, not in this uncertain economy. And when the economy improves, as it will sure as there is a business cycle, we'll be told that now is no time to fiddle with the tax system because everything is going so well. And this whole cumbersome apparatus on the back of the American taxpayer will only grow more cumbersome.
That's why there is no time like the present to abolish the Internal Revenue Code.
And once again, as is our annual custom on Tax Day, we suggest just that. This year let's do it.
Editorial on 04/18/2016