Tag: Tax reform is a joke

The Fetid Swamp Of Tax Reform

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The likelihood that either party will ever drain the fetid swamp of corruption that is our tax code is zero, because it’s far too profitable for politicos to operate their auction for tax favors.

To understand the U.S. tax code and the endless charade of tax reform, we have to start with four distasteful realities:

1. Ours is not a representational democracy, it’s a political auction in which wealth casts the votes that count. Those seeking political influence over issues such as taxation place their bids in the political auction via campaign contributions and lobbying. The winner of the political auction gets favorable treatment, and everyone else ends up subsidizing the gains of the winner.

2. The wealthy pay the vast majority of federal income taxes (as oposed to payroll taxes, i.e. Social Security and Medicare), so tax cuts end up benefiting the wealthy.

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Will Tax Reform Increase or Limit Liberty?

Guest Post by Ron Paul
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President Trump and the congressional Republican leadership recently unveiled a tax reform “framework.” The framework has a number of provisions that will lower taxes on middle-class Americans. For example, the framework doubles the standard deduction and increases the child care tax credit. It also eliminates the alternative minimum tax (AMT). Created in the 1960s, the AMT was designed to ensure the “wealthy” did not use “loopholes” to “get out of” paying taxes. Today the AMT is mostly a means to increase taxes on the middle class.

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DON’T FALL FOR TAX REFORM

Guest Post by Jeff Deist

Please don’t fall for tax reform.

It’s a con, and a shell game. It’s a promise every presidential candidate makes, including Trump. But we ought to be suspicious of grandiose talk about Congress reforming anything. Tax reform proposals always evade and obscure the real issue, which is the total cost– financial, compliance, and human– taxes impose on society. The fundamental questions about war and entitlements and state power go unasked. We never consider whether Congress really needs to spend more than $4 trillion in 2018, or how it managed to double federal spending in only 15 years.

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