Even the experts can’t do their taxes
Tax law is getting so complex that even the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York—and soon-to-be Secretary of the Treasury—can’t understand it. Maybe it’s time to think about Taxes Made Easy again.
- L.A. TIMES: Obama’s Treasury secretary owed $26G’s in taxes, but it’s O.K.
- “Isn’t this—together with Charlie Rangel’s problems—an argument for tax simplification? I mean, if the Chairman of Ways and Means, and the Treasury Secretary nominee—who’s head of a Federal Reserve Bank—can’t keep their taxes straight, how can the government expect the rest of us to?”
- Sarah Palin’s Tax Problem?
- Make sure you read it to the end. Minor tax problems can be major, and major ones minor, in the media’s eye. It all depends on one little letter.
- Obama’s Judgement: Treasury Pick “Forgot” To Pay His Taxes & Kept Money Given As Reimbursements For Money He Never Paid
- “And when exactly did he finally pay those taxes? After Obama named him treasury secretary, and after the vetting team found the little itty bitty oversight. Just a tiny mistake you see.”
- Obama Treasury nominee oversaw Citigroup’s descent into the toilet
- “In the case of Citigroup, evidently it meant a lot of rhetoric about making sure banks have enough capital to offset their risk while politely ignoring Citi making riskier and riskier deals as its capital dwindled.”
- Is Tax Complexity Inevitable?
- “Complexity burns off real wealth from society while providing no offsetting benefit—something economists call a ‘deadweight loss.’ How large is that loss? The U.S. Treasury estimates the cost of compliance with the federal income tax alone is $125 billion per year.”
- Americans Suffer as Tax-Law Complexity Gets Tougher, Citizen Group's Annual Study Finds
- “Taxpayers using any of the 1040 tax form series will spend an average of 24.2 hours and $207 completing their returns this year, up from 23.3 hours and $179 three years ago.”
More taxes
- A customer service model of federal spending
- “If we can put a moon on the man, why cannot we devise a system whereby every state is billed by DC annually, and let the states compete for citizens to pay the taxes?” Moving from a system where the federal government taxes individuals to one where the federal government taxes state governments makes all of our lives a lot simpler and solves a lot of thorny civil rights issues as well.
- What’s wrong with a national sales tax?
- When considering a new tax, consider how easily that tax is abused by the state and by the state’s good intentions.
- No corporation pays taxes
- Corporations don’t pay taxes. Their employees do, and their customers do. Every dollar that a company has to pay in taxes, that company must pass on to either their employees or their customers, if the company wants to stay in business.
- How to raise taxes in a Tea Party world
- If you want to raise taxes, you need to show that you can be trusted to cut spending first.
- Lifestyles of the rich and obscure
- Tax cuts for the wealthy? I’d be happier about being wealthy if the lifestyle came along with it. Instead I’m stuck with Val-U-Rite vodka.
- 16 more pages with the topic taxes, and other related pages