i hope everyone reading this already filed taxes and even better recieved their refund. i dislike doing the taxes, mostly because i know it shouldn't be as hard as it is sometimes. to be truthful the irs does do its best to make things workable, they have some very nice faqs and worksheets that help out. i was trying to determine if we'd have to pay capital gains next year if we sold our house this year and found a worksheet and publication to help me determine what would be excluded. it was pretty good.
what is broken and annoying is the tax system. we have continually added and subtracted things from the fed income tax and deductions so that now it is unclear what really the base is. i hope someday congress starts over. we can't realistically go on forever with something based in an age where silicon was still found only in sand and glass.
4 comments:
I say go back to the old testament. 10% to God (this is the old testament part), 10% to state (country) and 80% left to defend yourself from frivelous lawsuits. those are numbers I can understand. Last year I put 9.25% of my income to federal, 0% to state becaues we don't file here, and 10% to church. it seems fair.
mmm well our effective tax rate for 2005 was 7.4%
so going to 10% would be significant for us.
It's complicated because all human endevours become more and more complicated as more and more people get involved. The government wants to encourage some behaviors and discourage others (like holding investments for longer periods of time, thus short term capital gains). I don't think it will ever get simple and I don't really believe you could pratically make it simple. There are too many people who would look for ways to shelter investments. We're actively looking for sheltered investments. Roth IRA, Normal IRA, I-Bonds, Muni's, etc all have different tax benefits. I believe one of the most important "loop holes" is to see that a large part of your estate goes to a non-profit when you die so the gains realized which are tax-deferred such as capital gains on property never get taxed.
maybe I can estimate my estate value for when I die. then estimate lifetime income and pay the difference to make 10%?
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