Posted: Wednesday, April 18, 2007 12:00 am
Now that tax-filing season is over, everybody who participated is likely to think: There must be a better way.
It is said that the average taxpayer spent more than 24 hours compiling his federal returns. In Oregon, add an hour or so for the state return.
Where does the government get off demanding that much time from citizens, especially since in almost all cases they've already paid the taxes, and the return just completes the paperwork?
Two avenues of reform suggest themselves - again - as they have for many years.
The first is to abolish the income tax and resort to some kind of consumption tax instead, like a national and state sales tax. People would pay their taxes as they spent money. No doubt a way could be found to tax also those who have a lot of money but don't spend much, to make sure they pay their fair share.
The second way is to to augment the system of withholding and change the system as to abolish deductions and adjustments. In this way, taxes would be withheld as income comes in. And that would be the end of it. Taxpayers might get the option to filing a return for special circumstances, so that if their house burned down they could get their taxes refunded. But for the vast majority of taxpayers, the taxpaying chore would be done when they got paid, and nothing else would be required.
There is little hope of either approach being adopted. For decades Americans have grumbled but done nothing about the chore of having to prepare returns. So we'll likely continue to suffer in silence, no matter how much more time consuming this annual job becomes. (hh)