Simplifying the Tax Code Without Making it Less Complicated
Today president Obama unveiled his strategy to simplify the tax code. Simplification of the tax code is a great idea. In 2006, the bloated code reached well over 67,000 pages as lobbyists and so called special interests piled on. Compliance costs for individuals are expected to reach around $483 billion a year by 2015, and the conglomerate time spent by the populace trying to make sense of the politicians’ crafty work in 2005 was estimated at 6 billion hours. All of this information and more is available in PDF form here.
Yet Obama’s effort at simplification does not address the size or compliance costs of the tax code to individuals and businesses. Instead, his plan seeks to close “loopholes” and make business as costly for American companies to conduct overseas as it has been made for them to do business in these United States. This fits the statist motif perfectly. Domestically, the solution to income inequality is not to encourage production and prosperity, but rather to punish those who produce and provide jobs. Similarly, the solution to companies that choose to do business overseas is not to make business in America more attractive, but to punish overseas operations that are currently subject to lesser tax consequences.
Any rational individual who sees that businesses are fleeing the United States in favor of less punitive circumstances under which to conduct business would first look at making business opportunities more attractive here at home. Yet the leviathan Obama seeks to create as he borrows, prints, and spends the country into prosperity requires additional funds. Ignorant of human nature, his administration and the congress that backs him will punish the producers and reward the looters at every turn.
As insensitive as this may sound, I suspect that the vast majority of Obama voters are either to ignorant or too stupid to understand that no ruler or group of rulers can change human nature or its inevitable consequences. The situation reminds me of congress’s efforts to save energy by tinkering with daylight savings time. The fools figured that more daylight would lead to reduced use of lights. It did, but people drove far more, canceling out the expected reduction in energy use.
Our formerly free and prosperous country is falling under the weight of leaders who were originally intended to be our servants, not the other way around. We are now owned by Washington bureaucrats, and should be grateful to be allowed to keep the products of our labors that they decide we need and deserve. I, for one, am grateful that Obama has decided to crack down on those who audaciously attempted to escape the 2nd highest corporate tax rate in the world and reduce their costs of doing business. Here in the People’s Republic of Amerika, it is clearly our responsibility to help our benevolent ruler as he grows the leviathan in an effort to save us from our stupid selves!
