Jlknapp505's Blog

Fix the tax laws, Congress. That should be job one. Do that, then with the additional income, put people to work. Infrastructure needs investment, and it’s easy to make it domestic-only. American firms, American workers, no outsourcing or offshoring.
Dump all of the tax laws, all the thousands of pages, in favor of a revised tax on businesses and individuals. Instead of 39% (only the simple-minded ever pay that), reduce it to, say, 15%…but make that a gross-receipts tax. And tax anyone doing business in America by requiring merchants selling foreign-produced goods to collect the tax.
Real competition; no more deductions for the jet the executives use or their cars or spectacular salaries and bonuses or golden parachutes or business lunches. Loopholes only allow creative accountants to hide anticompetitive measures that protect big business. Compete, GE, and Caterpillar and Big Oil and Big Pharma and Big Agriculture, or go under.
And for income taxes, a small tax for the poor, a bigger one for middle class people, a larger one for the wealthiest…and no loopholes. If it’s money, it’s income. All loopholes were put in because of bribes paid to congresscritters; throw them out. This is necessary because not everyone is a stockholder, hence subject to the effect of the ‘business taxes’.
It’s not that 9-9-9 nonsense. But it would work.
For anyone hiding assets offshore, put in a real penalty: say, 150% of the hidden assets. Pay part of that to people who report the hidden assets. And any American company doing business offshore, require that they bring those profits home within a year. For Google and similar who establish ‘Home offices’ overseas, consider them foreign companies and establish a tax basis for them; say, 25%, which is about the average collected by foreign governments. But keep the gross-receipts standard. And watch them move back home quickly. In most cases, it only means acknowledging that the home office was always in America; only a tax shelter was ever overseas.
But no loopholes. For any exceptions to tax law, require that a separate bill be introduced in the House and passed by 70% of the Senate. Sixty-five percent? OK; but make it a separate law that every legislator must vote on and the vote must be public.
See how easy that is? It increases participation, increases competitiveness, streamlines business, puts everyone in the game of government;.
And if I can think of this, why can’t Congress?

This entry was posted on July 27, 2012 at 6:21 pm and is filed under Economics, Government, Politics, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.