Taxes were on the
forefront of many Americans’ minds this week as they scrambled to meet the
April 15th deadline to file their returns. Tax policy in this country hurts taxpayers twice – once when they pay
taxes, and then when the government spends the money. Americans are sick and tired of the financial burden and the endless
forms to fill out. To add insult to
injury, after collecting this money the government does some very detrimental
things to the economy.
The burden of
complying with the income tax is tremendous. Since its inception in 1913, the tax code has gone from 400 pages to over
67,000. The Tax Foundation estimates
that around $265 billion dollars and 6 billion hours are spent just on
compliance. That expense amounts to
about 22 cents of every dollar the IRS collects. Imagine the boon to the economy if we spent that time and money expanding
our businesses and creating jobs!
Aside from the direct
loss of money and productivity, the funds from the income tax enable the
government to do some very destructive things, such as vastly over-regulating
economic activity, making it difficult to earn money in the first place. The federal government funds over 50 agencies, departments and
commissions that formulate rules and regulations. These bureaucracies operate with little to no oversight from the people
or Congress and generate around 4,000 new rules every year and operate at a cost
of about 40 billion dollars. There are some 75,000 pages of regulations in the
Federal Register that Americans are expected to know and abide by. Complying with these governmental regulations costs American businesses
more than one trillion dollars per year, according to a study by Mark Crain for
the Small Business Administration. This
complicated system drives production to other countries and shrinks our job
market here at home.
Big government is
destructive when it takes your money and when it spends it. There is no
economic benefit to supporting a government sector as massive as ours. In fact, this country thrived for well over 100 years without an income
tax. Today, if you took away the
income tax, the government would still have revenue from other sources equal to
total government spending in 1990, when government was still too big. $1.2 trillion should be more than enough to fund a government operating
within its constitutional confines, and that is exactly what we need to get back
to.
I have introduced
legislation many times to abolish the IRS and the income tax. It is fundamentally un-American to require taxpayers to testify against
themselves and be considered guilty until proven innocent. Abolishing the IRS altogether would trigger an avalanche of real growth
in the economy.
With these financial
hard times only just beginning, this would be the most efficient and logical way
to get our economy growing again, and Americans would need not dread the 15th of April every year.
- Congressman Ron Paul
http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2008/tst042008.htm
