Cutting taxes (like next year's delightful move to cut the Social Security payroll tax from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent) is only half the picture. The other half is, of course, cutting spending. A government that doesn't spend as much is a government that doesn't need to tax as much.
In any responsible and sane conception of government, taxes must be collected to pay for certain services. The question that divides the country is which services are legitimate purposes of government. Maintaining an armed force for national defense is a legitimate purpose, as is providing social safety nets for the downtrodden and the hapless. Subsidizing corporations and markets in the private sector (like farms, auto factories, and banks) is not a legitimate purpose of government. There are hundreds of other illegitimate, unjust, and harmful acts in which the government is continually engaged--but statists and Left-wingers practically never discuss those acts in any serious way.
Maybe one day, this country will do away with all taxes on income and earnings, and instead tax consumption in a well-managed, sensible way. I'm a new proponent of the FairTax (www.FairTax.org). Let's hope that HR 25 and S 296 are passed, and that a new era of prosperity, legitimacy, fairness, and responsible spending is ushered in.
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The Income Tax system is a psychotic legal system and only gets worse year after year after year.
Citizens and businesses of this country spend billions of dollars a year and then spend billions of hours in attempted tax compliance. This just to figure out what they owe or don't owe in Income taxes.
The Income Tax code itself is almost 70,000 pages of arbitrary and contradictory laws and opinions.
This plus at least a million more pages of Revenue Rulings, Letter Rulings, Tax Memorandums, Tax Publications, Tax, Federal and Supreme Court Opinions that are written in an effort to explain or figure out the mind numbing Income Tax laws.
Most personal, financial and business decisions all have to take into account this Income Tax system and generally require expensive assistance from tax accountants and lawyers who all have different opinions on how to apply the Income Tax legal code.
They themselves do not understand many facets of the Income Tax code, the same way most government officials do not understand it (try calling them up and getting a consistent answer to the exact same tax question – good luck on that).
This is no way to fund a government!
Unless something is done to get rid of this “system” (like instituting the Fair Tax), this Income Tax scheme is going to continue to wreak havoc on the United States economy and its citizens
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