Death, Taxes, and Other Stuff

As has been famously said, the only certainties in life are death, taxes and that the Patriots might have cheated when they won that one game.

All joking aside, taxes do pose a tremendous problem for America. We hear often about runaway government spending, the national debt and the deficit, however in my opinion, as important as those things are, they are merely symptoms of a greater disease.

That greater disease is an unfair, over-complicated, loop-hole infested tax system that has been cobbled together over the past two-hundred years, ever growing, ever expanding until we wake up here in 2015 to find we’ve created a ravenous monster. A monster that is devouring what we, as hard working Americans have a right to call our own.

Yes, a government must impose taxes in order to function and exist. We all benefit from good roads and bridges, law enforcement, sanitation, etc. But most would tend to agree that our tax burden is taking more than it is giving.

Think of it like this - who knows best how to spend your money? The answer of course, is you! If you’re hashing out your own money, you’ll probably be pretty careful about how you spend it and the money will probably go toward something you really wanted or needed. But if you’ve got free reign of Warren Buffett’s credit card, you might tend to not be quite as careful of how you spend your money, right?

The latter has become the government’s mindset. They have “We the People’s” credit card and aren’t very careful how they spend it. The more the size of government grows the more spending grows. The more spending grows, the more taxes must grow.

There are roughly 97 different kinds of taxes in the U.S. Obviously not everyone pays every kind, however it brings the point across. Federal income tax code, tax regulations, and explanations add up to more than 70,000 pages. The numbers are all over the board and it often depends on how you count, but the federal government took in right around $3 trillion in taxes last year (and somehow managed to spend even more than that!).

If that’s not enough, the cost of filing taxes must be considered, not actually paying the taxes, but what it costs in order to pay. 

“Tax filers face the task of understanding IRS instructions in order to comply with paying taxes. According to the IRS, filing taxes will take taxpayers an average of 8 hours and cost $120 for each nonbusiness return. An IRS publication shows nearly 169 million individual tax returns (including all individual tax forms and estimated tax forms) were filed in 2012, costing over $20 billion in compliance costs. This is not the cost of actually paying taxes, but only the cost of filing. The time consumption is further burdensome to individual tax filers. Considering 8 hours each for 169 million returns, Americans spent over 1.35 billion hours filing individual taxes.” (TaxFoundation.org)

This, my friends, should not be. But what can be done? It’s as if we are on a runaway train with no breaks. 

Our tax system needs help. Serious, far reaching, intense help. I mean, who in this country wouldn't like to have a bit more of their hard earned dollars end up in their own pocket? It won’t happen unless some major changes are made.

Next week we’ll examine more of what can be done. I’ve presented the problem, next time we’ll delve into a potential solution.

Jonathan Paine

painefultruth1776.blogspot.com

@painefultruth76

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