Tax Lemmings
With tax time coming up shortly for all Americans, I just can't wait (wait!) for the talking heads of the new variety to bring on all sorts of Tax Lemmings (crazies) extolling the virtues of a Flat Tax or National Sales Tax or Value Added Tax (VAT) or even Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). Even though the Flat Tax would unjustly tax those at the bottom of the income spectrum and create a highly regressive tax base; the National Sales tax and the VAT would tax consumption, thus letting the wealthy go freed with their stocks, bonds, and annuities - not to mention making gas, bread, and milk way more expensive (think 30%-50% more expensive); and the AMT which needs some reform (so that it actually taxes the wealthy), the AMT is a fool's errand as a universal tax. If the Tax Lemmings who come on television in the middle of April actually discussed their plans with some level of honesty, then we should listen to them. But they actually deserve the first of April time slot, not the 15th.
But they don't argue their case with genuine logic and data. While all of the Tax Lemmings might hem and haw about the virtues of their tax baby, the one point each and every one of them will bring up to defend their tax proposal is the most idiotic and foolish argument possible. The argument will go like this:
Tax Lemming: American's are tired of the Byzantine forms to fill out and the outrageous amount of time it takes them to file. If we implemented [Insert stupid tax idea here] then Americans wouldn't have to waste so much time doing their taxes.
After that, the Tax Lemmings will trot out some phony statistic about productivity lost due to the amount of hours doing taxes and a similar bunk statistic amount the average amount of time Americans take to fill out their taxes.
In a word: Bull.
It took me exactly 1 hour and 35 minutes to fill out and e-file my taxes today. This didn't count the few hours before I spent researching different ways to increase my deductions - but the time spent was well worth my piece of mind. What makes the Tax Lemming's primary argument foolish is that the IRS has made filing pretty easy. The "Waste of Time" excuse is their primary argument because they don't want to get into how their pet tax would defund the government, overburden small businesses (Sales Tax, VAT) and be a giant check to the wealthy. What gets complicated is trying to figure out how to receive more deductions - and a majority of my friends (and I) see this more as a game. And I suspect many Americans do too.
If the Tax Lemmings want to have an honest conversation about why Farms get huge tax breaks, when the Farmers themselves actually receive a fraction of that savings compared to huge AgraBusiness, then we can have that conversation. Or why did the Republican Congress pass huge tax breaks to the wealthy while us Groundling's have to pour through the books to find tax breaks.
But we won't; the Tax Lemmings will continue to talk about wasted time and then jump off the cliff until tax time next year.
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This is the permanent home of Tax Lemmings. I wrote this post at 14:41 on April 10, 2005. This post is part of grubbykid.com, a weblog. If you liked this entry, why don't you read some other posts such as The Cellist or Aerial View Of Vatican City? Or you could go to the site archives or return home. All are good choices.
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Some descriptive tags for this entry are: politics foolish analysis.
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Some descriptive tags for this entry are: analysis, foolish, politics.
Mommy... what's a tag?
