Emsworth
Junior Chimp
Posts: 9,054
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« on: June 10, 2005, 06:08:12 PM » |
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Denver, Colorado
Ladies and Gentlemen,
As the general election nears, I wish to address you on one of the most important political issues in the nation: taxation. Our system of income taxation is extremely convoluted; the average Atlasian faces great difficulty when attempting to comprehend it. Indubitably, a simplification of income tax law is called for.
One particularly complex branch of tax law is the Alternative Minimum Tax, or AMT. The law, as it presently stands, requires Atlasians to calculate figures for both the regular income tax and the Alternative Minimum Tax, and then pay whichever is higher. I submit, my fellow citizens, that this labyrinthine scheme subjects the people to unfairly high compliance costs. The amount of work involved in preparing one’s tax returns increases, as do the expenses incurred in the process. It is not only the wealthiest Atlasians who must bear these costs; on the contrary, the AMT threatens those who belong to the middle class as well. Consequently, I make an unequivocal call for the repeal of the tax.
The original purpose of the AMT was to ensure that the wealthiest Americans did not escape paying taxes by taking advantage of loopholes in the tax code. This philosophy strikes me as merely alleviating the symptoms rather than treating the underlying cause. Clearly, the logical solution would be to eliminate these loopholes, rather than to further complicate the tax code. A variety of unjust and futile shelters, deductions, exemptions, and tax credits ought to be abolished. I am confident that the average Atlasian taxpayer does not particularly like navigating the meandering maze that currently exists. The average taxpayer would surely welcome the streamlining of the code an improvement.
It is true that repealing the AMT will cost the federal government some money. However, the government can easily endure the loss of revenue if it only becomes more responsible with taxpayer dollars. The waste of federal money on pork barrel projects, on futile programs, and on peripheral matters is astoundingly large; its cessation would more than pay for the elimination of the inequitable and unreasonable Alternative Minimum Tax.
Should Secretary Siege40 be elected President, and should I be elected Vice President, I would work with the Senate to formulate and pass a budget that would entail the rationalizations of the tax code I outlined above. The simplification of income taxation is, in my considered opinion, the only responsible course.
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