The Urgent Need for Tax Reform

This year marks the centennial of the federal income tax. The IRS and its tax code have been a burden to the American People, not only financially, but hard to understand, and deal with as well. The Federal Income Tax Code has over 70,000 pages in regulations making the people of this country to spend 6 billion hours a year to pay their taxes.

Some members of Congress are trying to make the federal income tax flat. Since the current Administration likes to use the expression “Fair Share” to define income tax, nothing would be fairer than a flat tax. 15 countries around the World have adopted the Flat Tax system. This tax system brings the same income tax rate for all, and simplicity as well.

Some other countries don’t have flat tax, but they do have a much simpler tax code than America does, making it easier to do business, and not having to worry about 70,000 pages that can get you in trouble. It costs around $200 billion for all Americans to deal with income tax in the current code; all this money and energy to deal with taxes could be used in a more productive way to the economy.

The deductions are also complicated, and lots of people each and every year get audited and eventually in trouble for not understanding what can and cannot be deducted. Plus this code allows more political driven policies such as tax breaks for people who have solar panels on the roof of their houses, and other green energy useless stuff.

It’s about time for a Tax Reform, in a way that Americans can feel totally free to do business again. The cost of this mess in the tax code is beyond numbers, because it doesn’t count all the discouragement that it creates in the private sector.

The actual Federal Income Tax Code is a lose-lose situation, hurting both the government and mostly the people.