Filing Status

Surprisingly enough, income tax reform has likely been the most easily fixable problem congress could have ever tackled. Why they have avoided it all these years could be the "64 Million, Billion, Trillion" dollar question..

Members of congress ceased working for the American taxpayer almost immediately after the first lobbiest appeared in Washington D.C. So, now it makes one wonder exactly who lobbies for or against the transformation of the I.R.S.??

If Mr. Corker is the astute businessman I am led to believe he is, he should be able to find the answers to the above questions. If only he hasn't been in congress long enough to have become a part of the problem..

Have a nice day, Woody

I have always mowed my own lawn and prepared my own income tax returns. I feel both are an American duty. Over the years my tax returns have grown from a single page to multiple pages, as each year I poured over the instruction booklet trying to find the latest tax break. Just recently I did add a purchased software tax aid which is handy but now as I wait in line at the Post Office, I wonder if I've compromised my duty as a tax paying citizen.

Disgruntled. The tax forms are too complicated. "Amazing grace: an easy tax / Count ten and give God one / The IRS's laws of tax / Ten thousand pages run."

What taxes pay for is often stuff I wouldn't buy nor give to. With business and charity we have a choice, but taxes get paid whether we like what we're paying for or not. "Stupendous grace: we pay God's tax / To any priest we choose / No choice have voters but to pay / Guys that we hoped would lose."

Taxes are too high, especially when we double the listed taxes for Social Security and Medicare, since our employers could pay us that if they weren't sending it to Uncle Sam. "Amazing grace: God's tax takes just / One tenth of riches' growth / Whereas the IRS's tax / Takes two-three times as much." (Quotations from "Tax Day Song," free for all to use.)

If the people who instigated the Boston Tea Party were alive today I wonder what (or who) they would throw into the harbor.

http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer

You would save money under this. Check it out... put your info in on this calculator in the next link to see how much you would save

http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=calculator

They can start with the little Napoleon Bob Corker.

I will never understand why folks don't use tax software these days. some of the best $30 I've spent all year.

Filing status 3: disgruntled and confused.

An American duty? How did we come to the point where it is our "duty" to waste hours of our time figuring out how much of our money it is OK for Uncle Sam to steal from us? I thought the 13th Amendment prohibited involuntary servitude. I guess the IRS never got that memo.

It would be much better to replace the income tax with a national sales tax. (Better still to repeal it and replace it with nothing, which would be completely feasible if the federal government only did what the Constitution actually authorized it to do.) I do not like the so-called "Fair Tax" though, mainly because of the "prebate" feature ... which simply means that everyone would get a check from the government every month refunding the amount of tax paid on "necessities."

First of all, the fewer people receiving government checks, the better. Heaven forbid we ever get to the point where everyone is on the dole.

Secondly, the government will inevitably start putting conditions on the "prebate" checks. If you smoke or eat fatty foods, your prebate will be "offset" to cover your increased ObamaCare costs. And who knows what would be next after that?

Finally ... as long as we are going to have taxes to pay for government, I firmly believe everyone should pay something. That way, everyone has some amount of vested interest in limiting the size and cost of government programs. With the FairTax as well as the present IRS income tax, a large percentage of Americans effectively pay nothing at all, and some actually come out ahead ... effectively being subsidized by those of us who actually pay taxes. People who pay nothing or actually have net income from the government have no incentive to limit its growth, and therefore can easily have their votes "bought" with the promise of more government handouts.

If we must have a national tax, make it a national sales tax that applies to everyone from the first dollar spent, just like Tennessee's sales tax. Everyone would pay something, though rich people (who buy more, and more expensive, stuff) would pay more. Therefore we would all watch Congressional spending more closely since we would all be paying for it. Now that sounds more like an American duty.

Sales tax is a 100% income tax on every cent you earn if you spend all your disposable income. Which is most of us. Sales tax is desirable for those who do not spend all their money because they avoid paying taxes by investing, saving, etc. While a national sales tax sounds good, it really results in a 100% tax on all income of poor people, who will now become even poorer due to the higher taxes. It is what is called a "regressive" tax and is what we currently have here in Tennessee which is the opposite of a "progressive tax" which is what Federal taxes are and result in taxing rich people more. I don't think the answer is taxing poor people more. Personally, I find it amusing that we are one of the richest countries in the world and have one of the lowest tax rates and still people complain. On top of that, in the U.S. Tennessee has one of the lowest tax rates in the country. You all need to stop complaining.

Also as far as the Boston Tea Party goes, if they were alive today they would be doing nothing. They were protesting against taxation without representation. Not taxes. We all now have representation in the Federal government we get by electing the President, Congressmen, and Senators so I'm thinking they would be happy they succeeded.