Should there be a law that requires major primary contenders for President and Vice President to release their last five years' income tax returns to the public?
How about candidates for Congress?
Governers? State representatives?
Would it require a constitutional amendment to U.S. and state constitutions to do that?
What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages to requiring this information?
Do you think that would be an invasion of privacy? Or that it should be the necessary ticket to ride?
For discussion...
It's not fair.
Professional politicians draw paychecks like everyone else. The rest of their money power is in non profits, PACs, and campaign funds, none of which issue a W2 or 1099 as "regular income". Generally, they live a simple financial life with relatively simple income from a public entity.
They are the "rent seeking" class that you can't criticize because there is nothing there. They have never earned a private dollar. There is nothing to report. (
but wouldn't you like to know how much your boss makes, eh?)
You hear about tax reform. You have no idea how many layers of reporting go into documenting income in the private sector. And to take a tax return from like someone like Trump (or Bill Gates, Jeff Bezo's, etc. for that matter), dueling CPA's can keep "questionable deductions, suspicious credits taken, suspicious sources of income, credits taken but not proved, etc.". So this allows every tax CPA in the USA to comb through a complicate tax return looking for "violations" for financial voyeurs.
How many of you know that most of the taxes of the biggest private companies mostly negotiate their taxes with the IRS? Why? Even the IRS isn't all that sure about it's regs and don't want to go to court, either, so they settle on a figure, and that's then end of it. They take what they can get.
Suppose you want to ask a complicated tax question of IRS rather than the CPA. They won't answer you. "File and we'll deal with it later". Thanks for that, assholes.
So in brief, public disclosure is a means of shaming an opponent that has been out there slugging it out with all the stupid rules written by people who have done nothing in their lives but write rules and have make a profit in their lives.
If you have a beef with a businessman, you really have a beef with the IRS who operates under rules written by your congressmen.
If you don't remember anything else, remember this: Every dollar of tax money originates in the private sector, and is derived from their profits in the market place.