Ronald Reagan’s famous quote is quite applicable to a proposal being floated around D.C. as the way to “fix” one of the most irritating problems with the income/payroll tax system—having to file annual income tax returns.
An article published at Vox.com accurately sets forth the intent of the Ruling Class and their minions in D.C. not to reform the federal income/payroll tax system, but to use it to expand their control over us.
The article states:
- The IRS brags that 70 percent of Americans are eligible for Free File, but for the 2019 tax season, only 4.2 million returns out of 157.2 million total returns were filed through Free File. That’s just 2.6 percent.
- Intuit and H&R Block are withdrawing from the free filing program.
- California’s ReadyReturn pilot allowed for pre-filled returns to be mailed to most Californians, sparing them from having to fill in their returns themselves.
- Countries like Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, Chile, and Spain already offer ”pre-populated returns” to their citizens.
- The IRS has all the information it needs to calculate our taxes and send each of us a filled-out return
Simplicity is not the Real Reason for IRS Prepared Returns
According to the IRS in 2019:
- There were 154,094,555 individual income tax returns filed yielding $1.942 trillion in revenue for the government.
- There were 2,146,904 corporate income tax returns filed yielding $275.863 billion.
- There were 239,618 gift tax returns filed yielding $1.563 billion.
- There were 25,742 estate tax returns yielding $16 billion.
How can this be done? When our employers send us a W2 or others send 1099’s showing the amount of income from interest or other independent services, a copy is sent to the IRS. Part of the additional funding for the IRS proposed by the Biden administration is for an upgrade to IRS computers.
In theory, it would be simple for these new IRS super computers to compile all of this information that the IRS already gets, and prepare your 1040 income tax return for you.
Although this hasn’t been clearly stated, the eventual plan is for the IRS to prepare your return for you. They would send you a copy along with either a refund or a bill for additional taxes owed.
To be fair, there are a number of tax filers who have only regular income from an employer that’s reported on a W2, and who take the standard deduction. In those cases, the IRS computer would likely produce an accurate return.
However, as the complexity of a return increases, the likelihood of having the computer generate it accurately lessens considerably. Many taxpayers have to attach a number of different schedules to their basic 1040, or have income separate from their W2 earnings.
What if the IRS-prepared return is not accurate? If you think it’s frustrating now trying to get thru to the IRS and get answers to your questions, just wait until you try to dispute the accuracy of the data that the IRS’s super computers come up with on you. Also, what’s the difference between spending time and effort preparing your return and spending time and effort checking the accuracy of an IRS-generated return?
What is the real reason behind this “fix”? The real reason is that the Ruling Class and their minions want all of us to just blindly accept the control they want to exert over our lives. They don’t want us challenging them about the amount of money being taken from us by the income/payroll tax system.
CONCLUSION
The Ruling Class and their minions very much agree with the following story:
A man walked into the income tax collector’s office, sat down and beamed at everyone.
“What can we do for you?” the clerk asked.
“Nothing at all,” the man replied. “I just wanted to meet the people I’m working for.”
Informed people are the greatest threat to the Ruling Class and their minions. This is why they are so fiercely opposed to the FAIRtax. They know that if they can reduce some of the irritation that filing tax returns causes us, we would be more likely to just go along with their system.
And then, once we’ve accepted the idea of them preparing our tax returns for us, they can put whatever figures they want on those returns and extract as much as they want from us without resistance.
Never lose sight of the fact that when the Ruling Class and their minions say they’re doing something “for us”, they’re really doing it for themselves. And there’s nothing they’d like more than to get people just shut up and quit complaining about being fleeced every payday.
What can each of us do?
We can write letters and make calls to our elected representatives demanding that if the government really wants to eliminate the burden of filing income tax returns, they should enact the FAIRtax and do away with tax returns altogether.
The great 18th century Irish statesman Edmund Burke made a statement that applies in many ways,
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
If you want to prevent the IRS from being further weaponized to punish those of us who may object to the D.C. opinions and dictates of what is good for us, then help us PASS THE FAIRTAX!
The IRS will be gone and we will pay our taxes when we make purchases. WE and not D.C. Elites will decide how much federal tax we pay!
If you have friends who don’t know about the FAIRtax, send them to FAIRtax.org. Have them watch the white boards under “How It Works” and, if they agree, ask them to please join us.
Then contact your Members of Congress and the President and demand that Congress pass -the FAIRtax—the only fair tax.
Remember, if we don't continue to tell the truth and demand a change, then this quote from George Orwell's 1984 may foretell our children's future:
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”
Is it hopeless? When confronted with a seemingly impossible problem, remember the statement attributed to the author George Bernard Shaw who wrote, You see things; and you say “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say “Why not?”
Isn’t it time for us to ask, “Why not?”