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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (207162)	12/4/2001 10:03:38 PM
From: SecularBull	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

We have a small business, and the tax loopholes of which you speak are few and far between. As for the rich, I am sure they'd prefer a flat tax. I think that your perception of the situation is flawed (and most probably by class envy). ~SB~

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (207162)	12/4/2001 11:14:25 PM
From: Mana	Respond to of 769670

Your buddy Rep. Dick Armey is way ahead of you. OK....if the tax laws were written for the poor it would take only one page which would say...you earned x amount of money, you owe x amount of tax. Instead we have a room full of volumes of tax laws written with loop holes for more well off individuals which people who merely own a home and get a mortgage interest writeoff. flattax.house.gov Your secret is safe with me. I won't tell anyone that your agree with a Republican. -Mana

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (207162)	12/5/2001 9:55:36 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Bravo! There's no other way to explain the mohair subsidy, the sugar subsidy, the oil depletion allowance, the fact that taxpayers subsidize McDonalds and Boeing for all their overseas advertising, the fact that Ford (profitable until this year) has paid no federal taxes for a few years, and the percentage of profits GM has paid for the last several years hovers around 8.x%. I'd personally LOVE to have my tax rate at 8% :( The people who argued against Forbe's flat tax proposals by claiming they were "regressive" failed to admit one fact: that the current mismash of a system (if one assembled all the bound volumes of US tax regulations and administrative interpretations end-to-end, they would stretch the length of a football field) is even more regressive than the flat tax proposals. All those complicated loopholes are not there to promote "fairness" for the average Joe! Then, there is the crushing administrative cost of record keeping for corporate America and individuals to avail themselves of all those complicated provisions. This is estimated at somewhere between 100 and $200 billion EACH year. This immense sum of money could obviously be put to more productive use. Possibly an even greater cost to the US economy occasioned by the present 'corrupt' system (I do not use the term lightly) is the opportunity cost that is lost. If individuals and corporations were free to make business decisions based on 'what is the most economic use' for their money... instead of making decisions simply to exploit arcane provisions of the tax code, than the entire economy would be vastly more productive as trillions of dollars would be more efficiently allocated. The US economy could accelerate past all others in the world. All this attention to 'lowering income tax rates by a point here, and a point there', while simultaneously expanding existing loopholes and creating new ones... is basicly crap. It's a con game on the highest order. I see little or no economic vision from anyone in DC... with the sole exception of the Fed. Like Mark Twain famously said: "No man's wallet is safe when Congress is in session." We would all be better off if they would just go home, because unless you are a major campaign contributor they are not working for you..