The Senate’s chief tax writers plan to scrap the entire code and start from scratch in their push for tax reform, and on Thursday they gave lawmakers a month to make a case for preserving some of the $1.3 trillion in breaks on the books.Read the rest here.
In a letter sent to all 98 of their colleagues, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and his Republican counterpart, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), said they would take a “blank slate” approach to the tax code that assumes the elimination of thousands of popular perks, including such sacrosanct policies as the deduction for mortgage interest, the child credit, and the lower rate for dividends and capital gains.
This is the best news out of DC in a long time. If they actually pull this off (highly doubtful) it would go a long ways towards redeeming Congress in my eyes.
I'd love it if they just implemented the FairTax. However, with the current trend of coddling the 1% at the expense of the middle class, I suspect that they will kill the mortgage interest deduction and child credit, while preserving lower rates for dividends and capital gains.
ReplyDeleteIf they would seriously reform it to make it flatter and eliminate any exemptions or deductions, AND stop sub-classing types of income, it would make everything much fairer. It would draw in people who evade taxation now, including (especially) large corporations and those who live off of investment income.
ReplyDeleteOf course, then they wouldn't be able to trade influence for corporate money and poor people's votes, so......
I am all for simplifying the tax code, but I fear there are far too many accountants and tax attorneys to ever let it happen.
ReplyDelete