"It's that joyous time of year: income tax time. So I spend time with my accountant. I don't want to see him, but I must. I could not do what he's doing. The tax code has grown so complex that today most Americans hire someone to do their taxes.
For the money I pay my accountant, I could get a hundred massages. I could buy a fancy motorcycle. I could take a cruise ship to Venice and back.
Better yet, I could do some good in the world. I could pay for two Habitat for Humanity homes or help three kids escape government schools by paying their tuition at a good Catholic school.
What a shame that I pay my accountant instead."
--This is pure loss - time, energy, human capital wasted - flat wasted, dead weight loss as they say - repeated for millions of tax payers, not to mentions businesses. How can we stand for this? This is statistical murder! It's a weaker national defense, it's more poverty and less productivity, it's like throwing virgins into volcanoes to appease some angry god we don't understand, it's barbaric and rotten and nationally foolish.
"What are we to do? Some people say scrap the income tax for the Fair Tax, a national sales tax. Others want a flat income tax of, maybe, 17 percent. One form; no deductions.
There's always danger in proposing a replacement for the income tax: We could end up with two taxes. I wouldn't put it past our greedy Congress to promise that a national sales tax-or worse, a value-added tax-would replace the income tax then, once the new taxes are in place, to say that the need for revenue is so great that they must retain the income tax, too.
Let's not take our eye off the ball: lower and much simpler taxes."
John Stossel is host of Stossel on the Fox Business Network. He's the author of Give Me a Break and of Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity. To find out more about John Stossel, visit his site at johnstossel.com.
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