Tax Help Blog

No more income tax! No more filing! No more government meddling in personal and business affairs! Ah, what a pleasant dream! But not an easy dream to realize, alas. The money has already been spent. Even with drastic cuts in “necessary” government programs, we need high taxes to pay down the debt and pay off the retirees. The income tax may be ugly, unpleasant, and intrusive, but it also works. No other tax is likely to bring in as much revenue. Those who advocate the Fair Tax or the Single Tax as complete replacements stretch credulity. This is not to say their ideas lack any merit. On the contrary, we can learn much from the advocates of these alternative tax systems. Replacing all of our income taxes with either by itself, however, is unrealistic. If we want to do away with the income tax, we’ll need multiple replacement taxes and many government spending cuts. For this reason most of this site is devoted to making the income taxes less bad. There, much can be done right away. For the long term let us dream, nonetheless. Let us dream realistically, however, and craft replacements for the income tax that would actually work, work both financially and politically. The replacements must be fair and enforceable, and allow the economy to grow. [...]