Many have been lured into viewing Uncle Sam as their sole source of support and hope, abdicating personal responsibility and self-government.
As silver-tonged politicians seek votes and the gratification of their ruling passions, the unbridled growth of government, along with its perpetually expanding tax system, is the natural consequence of a population which no longer desires to assume responsibility for the quality of their own lives.
And yet, before it can act to satisfy our every perceived desire, the bureaucracy must first confiscate the labor of workers and taxpayers so that can have revenue to spend. Despite this weakness – or perhaps because of it – politicians have fabricated a tax code that is abusive and remarkably confusing.
Americans spend millions of collective hours complying with federal tax laws. In 2012, individuals will waste on average about 12 hours each preparing their personal income tax returns. Just 75 years ago, instructions for Form 1040 were only two pages; today, they are 189 pages long. And the code is constantly transforming, realizing 4,428 changes in the last decade.
Taxpayers will spend $431 billion complying with the code this year, based on a new study by Arthur Laffer, Wayne Winegarden, and John Childs. According to detailed research conducted by the Heritage Foundation, “that figure represents the value of the time taxpayers will spend keeping records and filling out tax forms, and the cost of paying professional tax preparers to do it for them, plus the cost of the bureaucracy needed to administer the tax code.”
Then, after attempting to plow through schedules, deductions, exemptions and limitations, citizens will then sign their returns with uncertainty, realizing that countless hours of form examination is no guarantee of accuracy or, for that matter, legality. In 1998 Money Magazine asked 46 different tax professionals to complete a tax return for a hypothetical household, and every single one filed a different return. Ten years later, it was reported that even the IRS was wrong on questions concerning tax law approximately 10 percent of the time.
Making matters worse, the Internal Revenue Code has tripled its contents in just ten years, running to approximately 3.8 million words. Printed 60 lines to the page, it would fill more than 7,500 letter-size pages.
By comparison, playwright William Shakespeare only needed roughly 900,000 words to share everything he desired. With a focus on quantity rather than quality, we are stuck with a code that is more than four times larger than the complete works of Shakespeare, and not nearly as entertaining.
Not to make you feel any more alarmed, but the entire King James Bible contains only 783,137 words.
According to The Tax Foundation, “Tax Freedom Day” arrives on April 17 this year, four days later than last year due to higher federal income and corporate tax collections. Americans worked 107 days — from January 1 to April 17 — to earn enough money to pay this year’s combined tax bill. Shockingly, 27 of those days were necessary due to spending paid for by borrowing.
The incessant obsession of those who feel themselves entitled to other people’s money is eroding the stability of our republic.
Not only are Americans drowning in paperwork, we are subject to laws that are unpredictable, arbitrary and capricious in their application.
It is the type of manipulation that will hinder, daze and eventually reduce the people to nothing more than a herd of industrious beings of which the voting majority – many of whom are on the public dole and pay absolutely no income taxes whatsoever – is the ultimate sovereign.
In order to have a stable, orderly society we do need some limited form of government.
But we are heading in the wrong direction.
And the people are paying a terrible price.
***** State Senator Chris McDaniel
Magnolia Tribune
