IRS Tax Advocate Calls for a Tax Code Overhaul

cpwill said:

Yeah, I know that part. What I'm asking is for where it says that the courts are the only body authorized to interpret the Constitution, as you claimed.

I'll give you a hint: the answer is "nowhere".

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It can hardly be more clear than what is written, "The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court". You are being intentionally obtuse.

Catawba said:

It can hardly be more clear than what is written, "The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court".

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Yes, and they are. What it doesn't say is "only the courts shall interpret the Constitution". Quite the opposite, in fact, as the oath of office requires Executive and Legislative officers to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, those officers must have direct access to it, meaning that they are required to interpret that document.


"The question whether the judges are invested with exclusive authority to decide on the constitutionality of a law has been heretofore a subject of consideration with me in the exercise of official duties. Certainly there is not a word in the Constitution which has given that power to them more than to the Executive or Legislative branches."
- Thomas Jefferson

Congress always seems to ignore the tax advocate. I don't imagine they'll do anything here either.

I don't think we should right now either. Few reasons, one any substantial reform of the tax system will cause financial uncertainty which wouldn't be good in a delicate economy. The second, I doubt we could even agree on a starting point. I'd suggest for example we might start by eliminating all taxes, deductions, credits, etc, and start with a new progressive tax, then add back whatever deductions/credits/etc... are really desired (though preferably we'd issue the credits in a different manner.) Do we include elimination of social security and Medicare taxes? I think the conservatives would protest. Do we include elimination of the estate tax? I think liberals would object.

I think real tax reform should wait until we have a stronger economy and the tea party extremists get kicked out of the Republican party.

cpwill said:

Yes, and they are. What it doesn't say is "only the courts shall interpret the Constitution". Quite the opposite, in fact, as the oath of office requires Executive and Legislative officers to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, those officers must have direct access to it, meaning that they are required to interpret that document.


"The question whether the judges are invested with exclusive authority to decide on the constitutionality of a law has been heretofore a subject of consideration with me in the exercise of official duties. Certainly there is not a word in the Constitution which has given that power to them more than to the Executive or Legislative branches."
- Thomas Jefferson

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Well, that makes two of you! When do you and Mr. Jefferson take your case before the Courts? As they are only body authorized under the Constitution to Judicate in legal disputes!

Mycroft said:

Half from higher taxes, eh? That assumes the other half will come from spending cuts, I suppose.

They'll cut a trillion from the military (effectively gutting it), and then they will proceed to increase spending in social services and entitlements until we are, once again, borrowing over a trillion a year.

That's about all we can expect from the Democrats.

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That hits the nail on the head.

Someone once told me that the difference between dems and repubs was that if you gave the repubs $100M, they would buy 2 fighters jets for $50M apiece, then promise to buy 8 more. 10 years later you've spent $500M and you have 10 jets.
If you give the dems $100M they'd start a social program that cost $100M the first year, $128M the second year and by year 10 it's $847M, you are cumulatively out $1.6B, with annual spending increasing, forever.

Khayembii Communique said:

Jobs aren't killed. Do you think the people getting paid to do their taxes are unemployed or something?

Besides, regardless of what the government does with the tax code, businesses will still outsource this process, for obvious reasons.

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The obvious reasons being that the govt has nothing better to do than try to cost me money. People don't seem to understand that it's the little guy that gets screwed again. The owner of a small muffler shop gets to go through all the same shenanigans as the big boys.

All the time, money, worry and planning that goes into taxes is indeed a jobs killer. The vast majority of the tax industry should be considered "make work".

Dwight said:

Part of the reason for these having more precision has to do with them being scaled over time to adjust for inflation. So any nice “round” numbers are going to go away shortly.

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Well, you could write the law such that even numbers remain even with inflation adjustments. The IRA contribution limits for example. Inflation adjusted, but only change when it hits a $500 amount.

That said, for most things I don't think there's any benefit to even numbers. With computers doing the calculating on tax preparation, tax planning, etc... the computer doesn't care if a number looks "nice". We could completely do away with tax brackets if we wanted and just use some kind of math equation to calculate tax a progressive tax and the computers would handle it just fine.

gingern44 said:

The obvious reasons being that the govt has nothing better to do than try to cost me money. People don't seem to understand that it's the little guy that gets screwed again. The owner of a small muffler shop gets to go through all the same shenanigans as the big boys.

All the time, money, worry and planning that goes into taxes is indeed a jobs killer. The vast majority of the tax industry should be considered "make work".

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Indeed, I think the small self-employed person/business making around $80-$110k net income is getting hit the hardest with the disincentive to expand/earn more. Basically a 28% marginal tax rate with an additional 15% self-employment tax so they're basically giving up 43% of each new dollar of income to federal taxes alone. Of course, whenever I see the Laffer curve discussed in politics it's almost always on people making much more, who actually pay lower marginal tax rates.

cpwill said:

Hey... this sounds like.... what Republicans have been proposing!





Buuuuuut, I bet we wooooon't....

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I think we should drop the entire tax code in a shredder, and start over from scratch.

American said:

I think we should drop the entire tax code in a shredder, and start over from scratch.

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I'm afraid I'd have to disagree. After shredding you will need fire followed by holy water, whatever is left should be discarded far, far away.