The Tax Code Isn’t Written For Us

Or for government. It’s written for big businesses and the wealthy. I want to underscore this point made by the editors of the Investor’s Business Daily:

The IRS instructions for filing out the 1040 form include a box near the back that estimates how much time it takes to fill that one form out. This year, it’s 15 hours. That’s a 67% increase from 1988. This year, the instruction booklet runs 241 pages. In 1988 it was fewer than 80.

The tax code has become so complicated that even the IRS complains about it. In its annual report to Congress, the IRS’ national taxpayer advocate, Nina E. Olson, writes that the tax code imposes a “significant, even unconscionable, burden on taxpayers.”

This is the hidden tax.

There is a multi-billion dollar tax preparation industry out there that shouldn’t exist at all and wouldn’t if our system of tax reporting and paying weren’t so byzantine. If that system were for us or even for the ease and convenience of the government itself, that would be considered a colossal failure.

But it isn’t for us and it’s succeeding in its objectives.

1 comment… add one
  • Steve Link

    The tax code AND most of government is designed to benefit the wealthy and big business.

    Steve

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