US Tax Code Longer Than Bible - Without Good News By Stephen Ohlemacher | Associated Press | 01/09/2013 Excerpts: WASHINGTON (AP) At nearly 4 million words, the U.S. tax law is so thick and complicated that businesses and individuals spend more than 6 billion hours a year complying with filing requirements, according to a report Wednesday by an independent government watchdog. That's the equivalent of 3 million people working full-time, year-round. "Taxpayers who honestly seek to comply with the law often make inadvertent errors, causing them to either overpay their tax or become subject to IRS enforcement action for mistaken underpayments," Olson said. "On the other hand, sophisticated taxpayers often find loopholes that enable them to reduce or eliminate their tax liabilities." Olson ranks complexity as the most serious tax problem facing taxpayers and the Internal Revenue Service in her annual report to Congress. She urges lawmakers to overhaul the nation's tax laws, making them simpler, clearer and easier to comply with. Momentum is building in Congress to overhaul the tax code for the first time since 1986. But Washington's divided government has yet to show it can successfully tackle such a task. President Barack Obama and Republican leaders in Congress say they are onboard, though they have rarely seen eye to eye on tax policy. They struggled mightily just to avoid the year-end fiscal cliff, passing a bill that makes relatively small changes in the nation's tax laws. "This report confirms that the code is 10 times the size of the Bible with none of the good news," said Rep. Dave Camp, chairman of the House and Ways and Means Committee. "Our broken tax code has become a nightmare of loopholes and special interest provisions that create added complexities and costs for hardworking taxpayers and small businesses." "Comprehensive tax reform will make sure everyone is playing by the same rules"...Camp said. To avoid angering millions of constituents who rely on popular tax breaks, politicians prefer to endorse tax reform without getting into specifics. Instead, they say they want to reform the tax code by eliminating special interest "loopholes" that help only small but well-connected groups of taxpayers. read: http://netscape.compuserve.com/pf/story.jsp?idq=/ff/story/1001/20130109/5891.htm ...... IMO: Our tax system has long been a financial vehicle for the wealthy to get out of paying their fair share of taxes. Just think of having deductions that would help a millionaire pay just 14% of his earnings while a middle class worker who pays closer to 35%, doesnt have those deductions, incentives, or subsidies to bring his percentage down to anywhere near the tax rates of the wealthy. The middle class worker thus pays percentagewise, over twice as much of their earnings as a rich person pays on his earnings. This is nothing but arbitrary confiscation of additional funds from the middle class while the wealthy are exempt due to tax breaks that are built into the tax system for the rich, curtesy of Congress. We need an immediate overhaul in the American system of taxation that favors the rich, when it should be favoring the middle working class who have been paying the lion's share of taxes while the wealthy have their attorneys sift thru the maze of deductions in order to lower their employers' tax rates to satisfy their greed instead of loyalty to their country.
