Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Obama's Tax Plan

For all of the talk about John Edwards being the poverty guy in this campaign, Obama's new tax plan is a brilliant move. First of all, it relies on tax cuts rather than government programs to help the poor, which is the best way to gain bipartisan support. Second, it also proposes an innovative idea that I've long favored: having the IRS fill out our tax returns. It will especially help the poor and elderly, but eventually the concept could be extended to having the IRS fill out the tax returns of anybody who wants it. It's the kind of idea that doesn't show up in the government's bottom line much, but it would save millions of man-hours wasted on filling out tax returns.

1 comment:

Minerva said...

Yeah, but by having the IRS to fill out your tax statement, wouldn't that also open up the lobbying efforts of the CPA's, financial planners, and other accounting groups to loose money? Clients probably wouldn't need their advise or assistance, you could go to the IRS. Only the very wealthy would agree that they still needed shelters which I would imagine the IRS wouldn't advocate.

Wouldn't the financial tax preparing industries trying their darnest to destroy such legislation before it was put to paper.

Is the proposed idea only for the low income? You didn't say?

It appears to me that anytime anyone comes up with a great idea to solve a social or medical problem, that those that are capitalizing off of the fear, the misunderstanding of, the maintenance of, or the inability to grasp the meaning of its impact or situation will see the solution as an affront to their financial existence? How did OBAMA answer this in class? I'm just curious?

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2019-20 Fellow, University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement, co-editor of the American Association of University Professors' AcademeBlog.org, and the editor of the Illinois AAUP's Illinois Academe. He has a Ph.D. in higher education from Illinois State University, and is the author of eight books, including "The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on Higher Education" (Duke University Press), "Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies" (Paradigm Publishers), and "President Trump Unveiled: Exposing the Bigoted Billionaire" (OR Books).