Molly Ivins: Happy tax day, YOU'RE GETTING SCREWED!

[G_j]

APRIL 15TH: YOU'RE GETTING SCREWED
By Molly Ivins, AlterNet. Posted April 14, 2005.


As more and more rich people cheat on their taxes, the IRS
is increasingly unable to go after them because it is so
poorly funded. For all this, we can thank the Republican
Party.

http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/21760/

Happy tax day, fellow citizens!

My favorite authority on taxes is David Cay Johnston of The New York Times, who won a Pulitzer for reporting on the terminally unsexy topic of taxes. His book Perfectly Legal -- The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super-Rich -- and Cheat Everyone Else is the single best work on public policy of recent years, I think.

Johnston reports: "Through explicit policies, as well as tax laws never reported in the news, Congress now literally takes money from those making $30,000 to $500,000 per year and funnels it in subtle ways to the super-rich -- the top one-one hundredth of one percent of Americans.

"People making $60,000 paid a larger share of their 2001 income in federal income, Social Security and Medicare taxes than a family making $25 million, the latest Internal Revenue Service data show. And in income taxes alone, people making $400,000 paid a larger share of their incomes than the 7,000 households who made $10 million or more."

The rest of us are subsidizing not only the super-rich, but also corporations. Fifty years ago, corporations paid 60 percent of all federal taxes. But by 2003, that was down to 16 percent. So individual taxpayers have to make up the difference, as corporate profits soar and wages fall.

..more..

[SoCalDem]

1. Nothing changed for us, yet we got back $850 less this year

for our combined fed-state refunds..
Yay tax cut:(

[renegade000]

2. the ending is the best part

IMHO

[MadHound]

3. All true, and what's really sad

Is that now the IRS is auditing small taxpayers much much more than the large ones. Thus, they're again going after the ordinary person, while letting the rich go scott free. According to the taxman I heard, it is more cost effective, ie the little guy doesn't put up much if any kind of a fight, thus doesn't eat up IRS resources, and the IRS gets more money. The rich can afford lawyers and accountants to tie up the IRS for months and years, and the IRS might still not get any money.

And of course, the IRS is always going to find some sort of actionable discrepancy. Many many studies have found that if you have 2,5, up to ten people(including tax professionals and IRS agents) do the same tax return, you're going to come up with the same number of different answers. Apparently nobody can figure out the right answer, thus, in the IRS's eyes, all answers are wrong.

I'm not a fan of flat taxes, however I think that we should simplify our tax codes, and clean out the IRS. We should also raise the tax rates on the rich and corporations to pre-Reagan days, and audit them more heavily than ordinary people.

[Patiod]

4. I don't believe what she said

No way the IRS has old computers. They are super-efficient in tracking me down and demanding proof every time one of my IRA investments rolls over. Every fucking time.

[signmike]

5. Remember the simplified form of a couple years ago . . .

1) How much did you make last year (_$_______)

2) Send it.