This Publish on X The film, which was distributed yesterday, received a lot of views. This letter includes a 2014 letter to the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) highlighting the poor state of the US Tax Code.
Donald RumsfeldA former police officer who died in 2021 and was Secretary of Defense during the Bush Administration expresses an opinion widely held among the US public: Submitting the necessary tax forms is beyond everyone’s grasp. This includes many accountants.
To quote the message:
“The tax law is so complicated and the forms are so complex that I know I can have no confidence that I know what is required, and so I don’t know and I don’t know, and I suspect that many Americans may not know whether their tax returns are accurate, as they have been in years past. I spent more money than I wanted to hire an accounting firm to prepare our tax returns, and I believe they are well qualified.”
This note is to warn you that I know I don’t know if I am or not. “The tax returns are accurate, which is a sad commentary on the administration in our nation’s capital.”
Yes, everyone knows this and no one does anything about it. This fact is emblematic of a corrupt legislative process.
The permanent income tax only came into force in 1913. Initially only 1% of the population had to pay. The highest rate remained at only 6 percent.
Perhaps the last attempt to solve the problem was during the Reagan Administration, which proposed a flat tax that could be submitted on a document the size of an index card. What the optimistic plan failed to resolve was the army of tax preparers and special interest groups taking advantage of the current turmoil.
While tax preparation has improved greatly due to the advent of software and artificial intelligence that need to become more automated, the truth is that a simplified code will save billions of dollars in lost productivity, time, and money. While some politicians who do not understand basic economics shout that wealthy individuals should pay their fair share (an undefined amount), few call for simplification; This is something everyone should accept.
