Political commentary, opinion & insight into the state of the United States of America.

I have a suggestion for President elect Obama. If you want to show you are sincere about real change and cut taxes while increasing the money netted to the government, here’s a plan.

Simplify the tax code. Last year the U.S. taxpayers spent $193 billion just trying to figure out what we owed. I apologize to my tax expert, Ron, for doing this. Ron, I enjoy your work, your company on the golf course, and the business you give my daughter. But, $193 billion is 14% of the taxes collected and the taxes collected are from only 37% of the public. 

It’s getting worse, not better. Tax code changes have averaged one change per day over the past eight years, there were 500 changes in 2008 alone. Doing the tax work eats up 7.6 billion hours of work a year, more than the hours worked annually at GM.

If you polled the public, I’m guessing the number of people who would embrace a simplification would be in the high eighty to low ninety percent. Look at all the jobs you could cut at the IRS. You could put them to work harassing someone else. Like the people who let the mortgage mess happen. That would probably add another few billion to the pot. This would be a bipartisan windfall for all right out of the box. Skeptics who don’t believe you will bring real change to Washington would start to be true believers. So, here’s the plan. Everyone pays what they paid last year less what they paid to have someone do their taxes. From there it’s indexed to income. One page form. You save what you cut from the IRS budget since there is only collection work to be done, no checking billions of pages of forms. If someone feels this is unfair, they can appeal. All appeals generate an audit.

This saves every American 26 hours and 40 minutes a year. They can work more, spend more, invest more, and use that time  in a productive way. It saves the country 7.6 billion hours in total. It would wipe out 1.4 million words that exist in the tax code today. 

Basically, it’s a start over plan with income taxes. States get the percentage they got last year from the Federal tax.

Here’s the real deal. So you collect a few billion less this year than last. No problem. When you are printing 2 trillion dollars to pass out to deadbeats who pay no taxes, cities that put you in office but don’t manage their budgets( New York City, e.g. ), states that put you in office but are in deep financial trouble(California, New York, Michigan, Illinois, to name a few), medicaid to states, medicare to states, etc. ), what’s a few dollars lost from the income side in lost taxes? When you get the economy turned around by putting us in debt for the lives of my grand kids, the index will push the tax revenue up. 

Do it Barack. Be a hero. Be a champion for real change. Step out and do something besides orating or voting present. Man up Mr. President. Show you have a set.

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