Tuesday 29 September 2020

How I Would Resolve The Tax Mess

Since the NY Times wants to talk about taxes.....why not talk tax reform?

1.  Dump the 80k page federal tax code.  Reform it to no more than forty pages.  A 7th-grader should be able to read it and comprehend it.

2.  Yearly tax code pieces added by Congressmen and Senators to be published every December, with the name of the Senator or House member.  

3.  All personal federal tax rates will be set to one of four formulas: (A) you make less than $25k a year and pay 2-percent federal tax. (B) you make between $25k and $50k, and pay a 5-percent.  (C) you make $50k to $100k, and pay 8-percent.  (D) everyone with over $100k, you pay 11-percent.

4.  You shrink the government to the size of the budget.

5. You limit each Congressman and Senator to only 8 staff members, and the travel budget should be reduced down to less than $10k per year.  

6.  All businesses pay a tax unless you can prove you ran at a loss.  Those making less than $250k a year, pay 5-percent.  Those making between $250k and $999k would pay 9-percent.  And those making over one-million would pay 11-percent.

7.  The only credits for people?  If you lived in a disaster area, or suffered from some drought-like situation, you'd get a credit.  Otherwise, we dump all these credits entirely.

8.  Every Congressman/Senator would have to publish their full tax return on a yearly basis.  Failure to publish it?  You get a one-month suspension from the job, and the Governor is allowed to send a temp up while you settle up your personal mess. If it hasn't cleared by the 2nd month, give the temp the job for the next six months.

9.  State taxes would be limited to a max of 3-percent of your total income.  If a state can't make it with that budget, the governor will be given 12 months to produce a new budget or be suspended from his job.

10.  The yearly tax form should be developed and simple enough....that a 7th-grade drop-out should be able to fill it out.  

3 comments:

bob searcy said...

i work for a fellow who is at retirement age and just sold his established dental practice . he has been making some huge purchases and has added another 6 acres to his existing pond . i sense that he's doing all this to avoid being stomped on taxes from the sale . taxes might be a complicated snarl but his current activity is a godsend to the local economy .

his farm is a LLC , the pond is a corporate asset btw .

Schnitzel_Republic said...

Around the nation, there are probably over 20-million folks who are running various schemes, to lessen taxes. There are 'farmers' who are full-time IT guys who will tell you of their 'Green Acres', their tractor which is only cranked three times a year, and twelve cows which they've given personal names to....all in the name of running a fake-farm. There are guys who build fake charity foundations and put their San Diego half-a-million condo in as charity property.

I worked with the NCO who had bought and developed a horse ranch in Montana...putting up a rustic cabin, a professional stable, and selling the property for 2.5 times its value five years later, and because of the label 'horse ranch' (actually in federal tax code), the profit from the sale had zero tax implications.

bob searcy said...

oh SR i agree . our farm raises nothing but a few housecats but a buttload of money gets spent locally anyway . its a bit of a sham but his building projects have often saved many of our local contractors right thru some dire times . think 08 -- 2020 . he just bought a new kubota tractor and more recently a 50 k kubota skid steer .

scam or no scam , aint no poor man ever created the first job .