The president finally got something of a legislative victory the other day when the Senate muscled through a $4 trillion budget plan. The measure passed 51-49 and now, the commentariat says, "the stage is set" for tax legislation later this year.
The White House's spokesmen, able to write a press release about something positive for a change, said the bill "creates a pathway to unleash the potential of the American economy through tax reform and tax cuts."
Tax reform and tax cuts. Oh, if we could only get both.
There will be much talk in the coming months of tax cuts. But a good place to start would be with tax reform. And the best way to reform the current tax code might be to take it behind the barn and kill it with an ax.
Get this, from the current instructions on IRS.gov this very day:
For interest and dividend payments and certain payments with respect to readily tradable instruments, the payee may return a properly completed, signed Form W-9 to you with "Applied For" written in Part I. This is an "awaiting-TIN" certificate. The payee has 60 calendar days, from the date you receive this certificate, to provide a TIN. If you do not receive the payee's TIN at that time, you must begin backup withholding on payments. Reserve rule: You must backup withhold on any reportable payments made during the 60-day period if a payee withdraws more than $500 at one time, unless the payee reserves an amount equal to the current year's backup withholding rate on all reportable payments made to the account . . . .
No wonder most of us either use a computer or hire a tax preparer (with a computer) to do our taxes every year. Who on earth can understand that kind of jargon? Try it yourself. Go to IRS.gov and look around. There are thousands of word-filled pages of this kind of balder and dash.
Though Americans might complain loudly at times, this country isn't necessarily anti-tax. We know that battleships, roads and schools don't build themselves. But does it have to be so difficult to pay our taxes? Talk about rubbing salt into the wound, this is like rubbing salt and a shot of alcohol into the lesion. If the government is going to compel us to hand over our money--and it does--shouldn't said government make things easier?
Every year, We the People are told not only to 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!
Read the above instructions again. Would you raise your hand and swear--on penalty of perjury--that you understand? Remember, the tax code writers write to be legal, not necessarily to be understood.
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, but abolished. For all of our sakes, and maybe the sake of our collective sanity. If the Trump administration is bent on cutting taxes and reforming taxes--hallelujah!--then take a lesson from a man named Thoreau, and simplify, simplify, simplify.
Do it now and 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, 2018? That would be long enough and incentive enough. And they'd have to come up with a better tax code, because this one would be gone.
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 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.
If the Trump administration wants a legislative win--and a win for the American people--this would be one of the winning-est.
Editorial on 10/23/2017