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And the other major political party consistently adds complexities to the tax code either as a form of social welfare or to extract revenue to pay for their pro
by harryh 7y ago
And the other major political party consistently adds complexities to the tax code either as a form of social welfare or to extract revenue to pay for their projects. The EITC, the AMT, the NIIT, all sorts of deductions.
Unfortunately, there is not really a constituency in either party for simplified taxes.
- jdavis703 7y agoThese social safety net tax credits happen because it’s politically difficult to create new “big government welfare” programs.
- harryh 7y agoI don't think that's true in many cases. For example their are all kinds of deductions for green energy usage.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoYou just proved the comment you replied to.
- jedberg 7y agoJust so you know, it was the GOP that passed the EITC and the AMT (in its current form). The EITC was actually a Nixon proposal.
- harryh 7y agoHuh. TIL. Well some pie in the face for me here. Though these have become DEM interests over the years despite the source of their original passage.
- klipt 7y agoI guess it shows that the GOP of today would oppose many policies of the GOP of yesterday as too liberal. Eg Obamacare was originally conceived by a conservative think-tank: https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2011/10/20/how-a-conservative-think-tank-invented-the-individual-mandate/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2011/10/20/how-a-...
- ineedasername 7y agoYou talk of entitlements and welfare. The political party difference isn't in whether those should exist, it's in which people or entities should receive them, and what form they take.
- tptacek 7y agoThe EITC remains bipartisan, and fits the "distribute cash not services" regulatory ethos of the Republican party.
- tzs 7y agoGiven the comment it was in reply to, I think that when spookthesunset said "simple" it was in reference to the filing process, not the underlying rules themselves. Any tax code likely to be passed if that other major political party achieved majorities in both houses of Congress and either the Presidency or a veto-proof super-majority in Congress, would still be one under which filing could be made free and nearly trivial for most individual taxpayers. It is the party that spookthesunset left unnamed that wants the process of filing itself to be irritating, which is why what we file largely contains (and in the case of most individual taxpayers) only contains, information that the IRS already knows.