April 15th: Tax Day
April 15th, 2008 by Peter SudermanOn tax day, everyone’s a fiscal conservative. Not only are taxes too high, but the process by which we pay them is far, far too complex — as anyone who’s ever filed more than the most basic return will tell you.
Here’s FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey writing on tax code complexity last year:
Americans sent a man to the moon, figured out nuclear fission, and invented the automobile and the iPod. You’d think that something as ancient and simple as collecting taxes wouldn’t be so much trouble.
After all, taxes have been around since Biblical times. But the Good Book, in all its wisdom, only devotes a few lines to taxes. The U.S. government, on the other hand, saw fit to spend three times as many words on its Internal Revenue Code as are in the entire King James Bible. Now, I’m no theologian, but it seems like we might do better to follow the Lord’s lead on this one rather than the IRS.
It was, after all, our Creator who endowed us with the rights to life, liberty, and property. But to me, at least, sorting through the tax code each year is about the furthest you can get from any other of those things.
Want to see how simple paying your taxes could be? Check out FreedomWorks’ Flat Tax calculator for a vision of tax-paying that’s nearly elegant in its simplicity and clarity.
April 15th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
“our Creator who endowed us with the rights to life, liberty, and property”…where, praytell did He do that??
I don’t think the U.S. govt. should be taking it’s marching orders from something that doesn’t exist BTW.
April 20th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Gee, Mr. Guy, we keep running into each other.
The U.S. government does not march to the tune of the Declaration of Independence. It was created by the Constitution of the United States, which, to my surprise, does not mention God even once.
If you remember, a group of colonists, harassed and ignored by an oppressive government, set the stage of their beliefs and the premise of their cause in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence with the beautiful phrase that you quoted.
Let me point out, although they used to word Creator to describe God, that term can be construed to mean “parents”. Does that help you support their cause?
April 20th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
As to the Flat Tax: I have supported the flat tax for years. I now support something that I think is better: the Fair Tax proposal. A national retail sales tax (without any exceptions or exemptions) with a prebate to make it “progressive” instead of oppressive to poor families, means I don’t have to report my income to the government and I don’t have to file a tax return.
It is fair, everyone contributes, everyone can control, to some extent, their tax burden, and it is a tax on resources rather than income (so the very rich, even when the lose money due to the stock market tanking, still pay taxes). It permits people to invest and to transfer wealth to their offspring.
That’s a dream to reach for.
April 20th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
As you state, our system of govt. in this country is NOT based on the Declaration of Independence, it’s based on the U.S. Constitution, period. I support the type of democracy that our Founding Fathers setup a looong time ago in that document…they really knew what they were doing!
“to some extent”…lol…dream on then…it’ll never happen…