Trying to Focus on Positivity While Digging Through Tax Documents~ A Plea for Simplification!

Once again it is time to start preparing to decipher the American tax code to file our income taxes for 2014.  Despite my intention to stay focused on the positive, it is truly difficult when sifting through the slings and arrows of outrageousness that Congress has thrust upon we citizens of the finest Republic in modern times.

While I would prefer a Value Added Tax, a flat tax or a National Sales Tax, in lieu of the income tax, the powers that be continue to pander to special interest groups and create ever more opaque and complex amendments to the tax code so that even tax lawyers are befuddled. And yet, if we taxpayer citizens call the IRS for advice and the representative on the phone gives us bad advice (which is a routine occurrence), the IRS gets a pass and we citizens are called to pay the piper.

This year I’ve called UNCLE!  I am an intelligent, well-educated woman; however, I’ve given up trying to calculate our taxes even with the assistance of the "intuitive, easy to understand" Turbo Tax for home and small businesses. And our small business has no employees! The fill in the blanks format is still too convoluted for me!  So we are engaging the services of my well-informed sister-in-law to save us from ourselves.

It shouldn’t be this hard. The tax code should not be taller my house much less the height of my cat snoozing on the floor in front of the fireplace. I wonder if any member of Congress has the ability to complete and file his or her own taxes?  While I do understand that accountants and tax lawyers want to stay employed, we citizens should not have to utilize the services of a paid professional unless we have extraordinarily unusual scenarios, diverse sources of income, significant capital gains, losses from investments, or have neglected to file for a number of years.

So again I call for reform. Rather than certain segments of the voting public concentrating on issues that are really none of their business such as gay marriage, abortion, stem cell research and the compulsory insurability of birth control, I submit that uniting to enact tax reform would be a far better direction to expend one’s efforts. Everybody is affected by taxes.  These other issues should be left to the individual.