Tom Toles for February 28, 2014

Republicans are no more going to ‘reform’ taxes than they are going to make it illegal to hire illegals.-Just like their laser-like focus on Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.

One point of the American revolution was the rejection of hereditary titles and privileges. We talk a great deal about wanting America to be a land of opportunity where people get wealth by hard work and enterprise, by earning it. And yet the very people who rail against the deadbeats, moochers, and leeches who want something for nothing and expect other people to provide for them - object to any lessening of the wealth than people obtain unearned, without work, merely by the luck of inheritance. Why do conservatives, if they mean what they say, object to inheritance taxes? You can’t take it with you, we say. So who better to tax than the dead? They don’t need their wealth any more. My parents are better off than I am, my father’s career was certainly worlds above mine. When they die, they may very well leave a tidy sum. Why should I get it? I did not earn it, they did. I would love to have it, sure. But I can hardly complain that my parents have not yet already done enough for me. People talk about inheritance taxes as though one’s children were merely extensions of oneself, and that a parent’s wealth “belongs” to his children. Hereditary wealth is one of great springs of unearned inequality, and I think of the efforts made by our Founding Fathers to lessen the impact of it by abolishing entail and primogeniture. I am always reminded of the words of Thomas Jefferson: “The consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property.” Granted, it isn’t as simple as that: there is a difference between Junior who ran the family business for years before his father (the owner) died, and cousin Jake who hadn’t seen Uncle Bill in decades and is surprised to discover that he is Uncle Bill’s sole heir. Nevertheless, if you don’t like money going from those who earned it to those who did not earn it, then you should be opposed to inherited wealth, and should be all in favor of taxing estates to the hilt to prevent that, and to relieve living, earning tax payers of the burden of paying out monies they actually did earn.

When I was a high school senior, “Marcus Welby” was a hit on TV. As portrayed on the show, he could solve any problem. We liked to say that in the final month of the series he would eventually solve the worst problems of all, increasing in difficulty thus: .Week One: TaxesWeek Two: CancerWeek Three: DeathWeek Four: Senioritis

During Mr. Romney’s campaign, we were told that Republicans would fix the tax codes by closing loopholes so that overall tax rates would be lowered. Asked to name those loopholes, we got no answers.

Yesterday, I read about a plan by some Republicans to close tax loopholes, several of which were named, and this would help to justify lowering overall tax rates. “Finally,” I thought: “This ought to be good.”

Until I read into the next paragraph, where Mr. Boehner said “Not so fast.”

Another example of talking the talk, but not being willing to do anything to support it.

To be fair, I don’t see the Democrats doing anything either, and talking about it is, I guess, the first step, But we’ve been talking about immigration reform since……when?

Another reason to toss all incumbents and try again with a new bunch. How could it possibly get worse?

“Fair tax” – Just one more way to disproportionately tax the poor (whose income all gets spent and thus would all be taxed) over the rich (who can afford to save most of their money and thus avoid sales taxes).

Habenero Hound: Yeah, that’s what the rich rulers’ little serfs always say – go for the second most soak-the-poor regressive tax there is. (The worst, of course, is capitation, like poll tax, which even Maggie Thatcher had to withdraw.) Just get rid of all exemptions above a living wage minimum and make the rich pay their fair share for a change. After all, the government enabled them to accumulate all that wealth, so let them show some gratitude, even if compulsory. [yes, irony there]

Under the so-called “Fair Tax” only NEW goods are taxed, not second-hand ones. Thus, you are taxed when buying milk and bread, but not when buying Rembrandts, or a ten-thousand acre ranch in Texas. You are taxed when you buy services, as from a hired landscaper, but not (if I remember correctly) when you pay wages to an employee, such as a full-time gardener. But I urge anybody who is interested to real Neal Boortz’s book on the “Fair Tax” and see what it really is all about. It has its points. The prebate is a good feature of it. Of course the real reason behind it is to lessen the power of the Federal government. It would eliminate the power of congress to encourage or discourage anything by the indirect means of the tax code, which is one of the few ways they can act in many areas. In vast areas, the “Fair Tax” would leave the nation impotent. Of course, libertarians WANT potent individuals and impotent communities, states, and nations.

When the income tax was adopted, the people were assured that only large incomes would be affected. For decades it was the conservative critique of the income tax that it had improperly and treacherously extended to include even middle class incomes. Now they have flipped, and do not claim that too many Americans have to pay income taxes, but that too FEW do.

Harleyquinn: No taxes fr those in poverty? Any tax plan should have that. What your unfair tax would do is put the middle into poverty, then with no one left to fund the government, you have a plutocratic dictatorship like your masters demand – or as Jim Hightower calls it, a kleptarchy, and you serve the kleptarchs.

Simply put, take out the personal and corporate exemptions and “tax breaks”, and you remove over 98% of those tax “codes”.