skullaria wrote:
I dunno if you are missing anything or not.
I always pay my taxes, but my complaint is that it should not take a professional with years of education to understand the tax code.
It is written with so many loopholes and tiny details - I understand that Forbes had numberous accountants do his taxes with the same data, and they all came out with very different amounts.
I also heard both Forbes and Bill Gates say in a conference that niether of them even had to PAY taxes, because they could just shuffle their money around.
So that's the only beef I have with it.
I read they were offering a $300,000 reward for someone that could 'show them the law.'
Good grief, someone go show them the law!
The reason for this is just like a lot of other things in our lives: it justifies someone's existence. Having the tax code be obtuse makes sure that there's the multi-billion dollar tax prep and accounting industry. This is the same industry that got busted for cooking books and ended up passing a law (Sarbanes Oxley) that increased their penetration into the market even further. This was the reason why the flat tax platform that Perot and Forbes ran on during the early 90's was stillborn. The same issues that are causing this great dynamic are also preventing things like education reform, health care reform, and social security reform. When someone makes their living on an antiquated system that is broken, it's very difficult to get them to sign up for the new way of doing things.
