Comments about ‘In our opinion: No way to run a tax system’

Well, a majority of the american people voted for a "Change" in Obama, Well they got a change. The biggest defict in the history of the US.

Jesus the Christ told his followers to give all of their belongings to the poor. The end is near!

Are you fed up yet Utah?. From the theoretically respectable to the far-left fringe, liberals seem to have gone off their medication when it comes to discussion of todays Tax Day Tea Parties, expected to take place in over 300 cities and towns across the nation. Tea Parties are not spontaneous outpourings of public sentiment. I suppose only rallies organized by ACORN or MoveOn.org are spontaneous. Tea Parties are being organized by people who are truly angry with the direction this nation is going. But scared to lobby Congress to shut down the IRS and tell them no more taxes.

"Taxes are the price we pay for civilization."--Oliver Wendell Homes
Although I certainly agree that our tax code is way too complex and riddled with exemptions for special interests(who just happen to be major campaign donors), we should remember that taxes in the U.S. are among the very lowest in the developed world.

The tax code doesn't need overhauling, it needs scrapping. The 'FAir Tax' is a more sensable way to pay for Government.

Leave it to Utah to talk about how unfair and stupid Obama's tax suggestions are.

Yet, conveniently ignore the ridiculous plan passed by Utah Republican leadership....

Amazing the hypocrisy shown...

@Confused: I think you are confused. GWB did the biggest deficit spending in history!

@Dave: I agree. But for some reason people are afraid of it. Especially those that have the means to consume more and dnot't want to giv eup in the loopholes of the existing system.

Re:Roland;Oliver Wendell Holmes.

DBG,
With the current Bailout, Obama added to the defict 1.3 Trillion dollars. Now how much did GWB do?

In one fail swoope of his pen, Obama ran up the defiict about the same amount as bush did in 8 years.

Obama took 90 days to do the same thing.

Now who is confused? Not me.

For the record, I really hoped that Obama would be able to make the changes he promised. But I knew we were lied to when he started to put retreads from the Clinton administration in the key position.

To "Hypocrisy | 8:37 a.m." leave it to you to turn people protesting the Government into protesting Obama. This is not something that began with Obama, Bush, or Clinton. This is something taht has been growing for a long time, and has finally hit a point where people say that taxes are becoming too much of a burden. This has nothing to do with political party, this has to do with people wanting lower taxes, representation for taxes, value for what they pay in taxes, etc...

@DGB "GWB did the biggest deficit spending in history!"

So far. Obama's proposed budget will run up more debt in five years than all previous presidents combined, from George Washington to George W. Bush.

This truly is inflationary spending; and inflation is a tax on everyone.

For an even more frustrating experience try explaining to the American worker why his taxes can be explained on a single sheet of paper and the taxes of Corporations, Companies, Churches, and thousands of other entities take 69,999 pages to describe their taxes and exceptions.

The short answer explanation is simply that those groups have the ability to buy favorite tax status with our government.

In your survey did you only ask about taxes? Did you ask just how much the respondent was willing to pay for Food, Shelter, Gas, Electric, Water, Sewer, Health, Dental, Clothing, transportation, charity, church, entertainment, telephones, education, Credit cards, Mail and shipping costs, computer expense, Etc, Etc. These are all things that tax our incomes and take our money away from us.

Some guy once said you are rich, directly in comparison to what you can do without. It seems to me that people think that doing away with taxes will make them rich, and forgetting about all the other things. Could it be that someone has tampered with their thought process?.

STOP GOVERNMENT SPENDING ON WASTEFUL PORK AND STIMULUS VOTE BUYING SCHEMES!

The spending problem is even bigger than the tax problem, and we cannot fix the latter without first attacking the former.

We cannot afford to continue with our government's present pending plans!

didn't bush sign the first bailout? wasn't he president for the eight years while the housing bubble grew, and then burst, leading to the current economic nightmare? wasn't bush been spending billions every week in iraq after declaring victory five years ago? didn't bush and the GOP chip away at upper-class taxation levels from 2001-2009 with the result that now the programs designed to help lower and middle class people are under funded? and, finally, isn't the national debt always going to grow larger as it is effectively a static part of our GDP, which is always increasing, and the proportionality will only remain the same if the debt increases to reflect inflation rates?

To Cosmo: You are correct, my bad.

To Confused: When Bush became president the national debt was 5.2 trillion and declining. When he left office it was over 10 trillion and increasing. Bush doubled the debt in his term and he didn't inherit a collapsing economy which needs a huge infusion to avoid a total meltdown.

Roland,
Are you forgetting 9/11 and how it effected the ecomony?

Did you forget about the dot com bubble that busted at the beginning of the Bush Administration?


Those two things had as much to do with the spending as anything bush did.

Your right, Bush did not have a failing ecomony, he had to deal with the aftermath of the Clinton administration.

Just like Obama is doing with Bush.

Wonderful editorial. I think left/right/middle should all agree that our Federal tax code is ridiculously complex. How does it help our economy to have millions of accountants spending countless hours to make sure businesses and individuals are compliant? There's a simple solution: a flat tax with a standard exemption for each adult of 45,000 and NO DEDUCTIONS. Unfortunately, it's never going to happen.
UltraBob: it's funny that you always want everyone else to pay high taxes and not complain about it. Are you a net Federal Income taxpayer?BTW- Social Security paid out more than it took in for the first time in it's history in February. Better save those checks UltraBob. it may go under sooner than you think.

I am more fed up with the time I have to spend doing my taxes than the money I pay.
If all taxes were done away with tomorrow, inflation would take that money anyway.
If you want to talk about a flat tax then lets do that but no one really wants that, they all still want their deductions just not yours. Just like the (not) flat tax passed by republicans in Utah.

To re: cosmo: The national debt is not static relative to GDP. If you look at a graph of the debt as a percentage of GDP, you find that it reached its peak right after WWII. From there it declined steadily until the election of Ronald Reagan, at which point it began increasing rather rapidly. It declines toward the end of Clinton's presidency and resumes a rapid upward trend as soon as Bush Jr. became president.

To "Roland Kayser | 11:58 a.m." you said that Bush doubled the debt between 2000 and 2008, which you are against. That increase was about $5 trillion. We now have Obama in office and the Congressional Budget Office estimates an increase to the national debt by as much as $9.3 trillion over the next decade. Which is 1.86 times the debt that Bush ran up.

So, what is your plan to reduce debt and pull us out of the recession? You talk about the problems, but what is your solution.

My solution is the same as what I do at home. If I don't have the money now, I wait until I have to money to make those purchases. You can't borrow your way to prosperity.