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Health & Fitness

Tax Filing Season - America's Annual Needless, Senseless Misery, Making Our Nation a Laughingstock

Little Hope for Federal Income Tax Reform/Simplification on the Horizon, but Tax Software Packages Can Make the Monumental Task Easier

Those who believe that the federal government is out to get us have a great deal of fuel to add to the fire in consideration of the Internal Revenue Service Code and all of the misery that is associated with it for all involved in the system.

Over the century in which an income tax has been imposed, the code has burgeoned to tens of thousands of pages of confounding drivel and the system of levying taxes made more complex each year. There is something seriously wrong when those that are paid to interpret and enforce the code, Department of the Treasury employees, are unable to consistently do so with accuracy.

I interact regularly with an attorney acquaintance who files a simple tax return, one with no stock investments, yet this highly educated, savvy individual is unwilling and unable to complete the tax return without assistance, choosing to engage a professional each year at significant expense, and procrastinating to the last minute to file.  This person is by no means alone. Is this the way it should be?

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For the poor soul that owns and sells shares of stock, including mutual funds, the complexity involved in filing a return, including calculating basis, serve as a disincentive to invest.

The government could make the task infinitely easier for us, even under the current code, if it would prepare a preliminary return for our approval which lists wages, dividend and interest income, stock sales, and other income which is reported to it under our social security numbers by entities that provide income to us. 

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Our nation is ungovernable and dysfunctional. It would be ludicrous to believe that even amidst talk of tax reform and simplification, that a hyperpartisan U.S. House and Senate will agree to any tax proposal which could someday be signed by President Obama, and I would note that the president is not ever going to agree to scrap the income tax system in favor of a consumption levy or to a flat tax as that would deny him the opportunity to target upper income Americans to pay significantly higher rates.

I would note that in the fiscally-crumbling state of California, the individual that earns over a million dollars per year now will pay a 39.6% federal income tax marginal rate, a 13.3% state income tax rate plus any local taxes. Do we not reach the point at which there is a disincentive to earn more, or in lieu of that, to use strategies to shield income from taxation?

I will end on a positive note! After procrastinating, but finally completing my 2012 return on my own with the use of a trusted software package, that of www.taxactonline.com, the refund I was due was automatically deposited into my checking asccount a mere nine days after filing! Even in the era of the "sequester", the Internal Revenue Service came through, for which I commend it!

Taxactonline.com will electronically file federal and state returns and set up refunds or payments due for any individual for a mere $17.95, an excellent investment. It makes the misery of tax filing season less taxing.

Finally, does any lucid, competent individual believe that the federal income tax system is fair and equitable, that it is the best that could be devised? I would love to hear such a person's rationale.

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