Not So Taxing

Taxes are a major bone of contention in the presidential campaign, with John McCain for less of 'em, and Barack Obama for even less, for those with less. Taxes will be a major bone of contention whoever's elected, as the nation confronts the long-term cost of the Bush tax cuts about to sunset. As to their benefits, they seem to have sunset awhile back.

With public discontent at a fever pitch, taxes and tax rules are among the most obvious targets for our frustrations. The paycheck withholding is a much biggest cost than fuel or food and is tallied much more precisely. Its benefits, direct and indirect are less apparent. And then of course there's the taint of corruption as the sheer complexity draws lobbyists and rules benders like pigs to slop, and sends all the flag-saluting patriots scurrying for tax shelters.

Given all this, I have no quarrel with the long-cherished dream of a simple and fair tax code, any more than I'd object to a comprehensive cancer cure or to the discovery of a perpetual motion machine. The current system's many warts are righteously exposed by Tax Guy Bill Bischoff as well as Stocks and Good Government Guy Jack Hough.

But sensible as those pleas for tax simplification are, I must take issue with claims that taxation is getting progressively worse, either in scope or in associated hassles. Of course the tax code has grown -- along with other laws, rules and regulations we're supposed to mind, along an exponential curve pretty much since the dawn of mankind. But it's not as if the ancients lived in some sort of flat-tax paradise. Mesopotamians had to contribute labor as well as beasts. Egyptians apparently pioneered unfair tax shelters. The Romans really stuck it to the non-native speakers of Latin.

More recently, the British briefly saddled North America with onerous taxes on spirits, playing cards and such sparking a tax revolt that forged the United States. And it's been all of 44 years since a poll tax was used to disenfranchise black and poor Americans. What utopia are we supposed to compare the current tax scheme to?

The Founders decreed checks and balances to stop arbitrary tax decrees imposed from above, but the universe has a sense of humor, because what they got was a maze of subsidies and tax shelters burrowed into the tax edifice from below. The reason there's been so much horse-trading and so little stables cleaning is that the government is perpetually divided and so no one's ever to blame failed policies, just as no one in particular tends to benefit politically from brave reforms.

Meanwhile, the complaints about the onerous burden of calculating taxes don't jibe with my experience, at least not since I started using software. I've expended maybe 90 minutes from scratch to filing in each of the last two years. And that's with capital gains, a home office deduction and a schedule C for my wife's freelance earnings. I just fill in the blanks, and TurboTax does all the figuring in a way that doesn't seem to (knock on noggin) bother the government. Increasingly, my tax data can be automatically imported from primary sources online. The cost is a tax-deductible Benjamin Franklin. It's a small price to pay for so much progress. So that's 90 minutes a year and maybe 35% of my income, counting state and local levies. I think that 99% of people who've ever lived would think this a decent deal.