IT AIN'T FUNNY
We all make jokes about it, but the joke is really on us. I refer to the discussed and cussed I.R.S. or Internal Revenue Service, the means the government uses to raise the cash to run the country and pay its bills.
We joke about it but it ain’t funny when you stop and think about it. A friend of mine who is the soul proprietor of a small service business says it takes him about one month out of the year to do the book and paper work for his income tax. He sent in sixteen pages of forms last year to show Uncle Sam how he figured his income. In other words he spent one twelfth of last year doing unproductive paper work.
I wonder how many unproductive hours big companies like General Motors spend doing the paper work for their income tax and their employee payroll deductions. Like my friend says, little fellers like himself and big companies just add the cost of that one month of unproductive time each year into the price of their product or service and pass it on to the consumer. I wonder how much less things might cost if we had a simpler, better tax system, say a National Sales Tax!!
A National Sales Tax could be reported on a simple card. No file cabinets full of old sales receipt for deductions you have to keep track of, no depreciation to figure out, no capital gains to worry about, no Social Security tax to calculate. Everything, Social Security, public welfare, the budget for the military, everything would be paid out of the pot generated by the National Sales Tax. I guess it’s too simple for people in or out of Congress to think about and comprehend.
Since most taxpayers have an employer that does their witholdings and other paper work for them, the average employee thinks all there is to the tax system is a W-2 and a simple tax form. If everyone had to do their own witholdings and send their own taxes to the government each month, I bet we would see changes. The average fellow has no idea of the burdensome tax system. The average employee doesn’t stop to think about how much more he could be paid, provided his employer didn’t have to pay for all that bookkeeping and unproductive paperwork.
I don’t understand it, people act like we have had income tax since the birth of this country. We haven’t. Income tax came into being to pay for the First World War and we have had to deal with it ever since. The consumer not only has to pay his share of taxes from his income but he pays the high cost of tax bookkeeping that every business must build into the cost of their product or service.
I don’t understand people blindly following down the income tax road when it is something they could change. Many Congressmen have almost begged the American people to support a new tax system.
I don’t understand why the people don’t support doing away with Internal Revenue, but I’m sure it isn’t funny.
Regards,
UNCLE
BILLY
