The Campaign Tax Discussion

What an opportune time to talk about tax reform, thanks to the ft-how-federal-income-taxes-were-distributed-in-2014_04282015-lgClinton campaign and their publicist, the New York Times. Accusing Trump for not paying “his fair share.” To chastise Trump for having to hire a team of accountants and lawyers just to file his taxes, shows what an abortion of tax code Americans are saddled with. For example . .

  • The top 1 percent of earners (incomes in excess of $615,000) are paying nearly half — 45.7 percent — of individual income taxes for tax year 2014.
  • The top 20 percent, with incomes above $134,300, pay nearly 84 percent of all federal income taxes for tax year 2014.
  • The growing complexity of the U.S. tax code has led to large compliance costs for households and businesses.
  • Americans will spend more than 8.9 billion hours complying with IRS tax filing requirements in 2016.
  • Put in dollar terms, the 8.9 billion hours needed to comply with the tax code computes to $409 billion each year in lost productivity, or greater than the gross product of 36 states.

That’s not how much taxes were paid. That’s how much it cost us, as a country, just to comply with the tax laws to file our taxes.

Under the FairTax plan, that’s $409 Billion per year that stays in our pocket, FOR FREE. Under the FairTax, you don’t “file” your taxes any more. There’s nothing to file under a consumption-based tax system. And April 15th is just another day.

So Hillary and her lemmings want to paint Trump as a tax cheat when he follows the tax law. Legally spreading a single loss in 1995 of $916 million dollars over 18 years. (Must be nice to have a loss like that to be just a bump in the road.) Unlike Al Sharpton, Trump did not break the tax law. They are great at name-calling on phony accusations.

Well guess what? Come to find out, the New York Times didn’t pay any taxes either, for 2014! And on top of that, got a “tax refund” of $3.5 million (of taxpayer money), even though they had a pre-tax profit of $29.9 million. How do you like the tax code now?

But when it comes to one of their own, like Rev. Al Sharpton, who in fact did not pay his income and payroll taxes, who has tax liens on him for over $3 million, well, he’s a frequent VIP in The White House.  Go figure!

Nowadays, Bill Clinton and Al Sharpton will tell you the hot money seems to be made in Charities and Foundations. They don’t pay taxes, especially when you can donate to yourself. Two different worlds, two different standards.