Tax Policy; Harvard Law School Summit

[Number Six]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_9Rk4CtqC4

David Cay Johnston and others give presentations here with historical retrospectives, he goes back to the "Code of Hammurabi" ancient Athens, etc. and is quite critical about current US tax policy and how universities teach taxes.

[Duke2Earl]

Actually, if you are even partly sane, it is very hard not to be extremely critical about current US tax policy. However, the fact that tax policy and the current tax law is at best, stupid, does not mean that individuals are not required to pay taxes.

[Number Six]

If you are partly moral as a citizen, as defined by traditional standards of what is moral, you have regularly contacted your representatives as well as doing other legal and productive things to advance a more healthy tax system.

[Duke2Earl]

I don't necessarily believe that "moral" has anything to do with it. I was advocating a system that is at least reasonably rational. During my working life (I am now retired) I often spoke out for a more rational system. I did so in writing to elected representatives. I wrote and published several articles. I gave a number of speeches and presentations on the subject and served on several committees of the relevant associations. I got exactly nowhere. And I expect no better in the future. In a world where money equals speech and legislators spend far more of their efforts raising funds than on actual legislative activities, I doubt there can be any other result.

And what would a more rational system look like? To me, it would eliminate or vastly reduce social engineering. It would stop favoring certain income producing activities over others. A system that stops trying to either encourage or discourage basically any types of income or activities. As Warren Buffet might say, I want a system where hedge fund managers pay the same tax rates as their secretaries... a system where international businesses cannot shelter hundreds of billions of dollars in untaxed profits by playing international shell games. In other words, a more rational system would simply raise the funds necessary to run the government in the simplest, most efficient fashion. And before I am misinterpreted, I do not favor a flat tax, a "Fair" tax, a sales tax or a VAT tax. But a simplified, more rational income tax would vastly reduce the compliance burden on both businesses and individuals. But that would, as most big changes, produce both winners and losers, and in this case the losers would mostly be those with the most money, who would be forced for a change to actually pay up. Never going to happen.