terça-feira, janeiro 27, 2004
Flat, Fair and Forever
Ed Feulner da Heritage Foundation defende a manutenção das reduções de impostos efectaudas pela Administração Bush e a introdução da Flat Tax.
The concrete results of the Bush tax cuts are all around us. Economic growth for the third quarter of fiscal 2003 was 8.2 percent. The stock market is soaring again. Business investment is at a 10-year high. Yet there's a big problem with many of the cuts: They're set to expire in a few years.
Consider the estate tax, or the death tax, as it's sometimes called. It's being phased out year-by-year and will finally expire in 2010 ? only to return at pre-2001 levels the next year. If you think family farmers and mom-and-pop business owners have a tough time passing their businesses on to the next generation now, look ahead a few years. Should they plan to die in 2010, or set up the elaborate tax schemes required to preserve their property for their heirs?
Of course, all this confusion can be settled with the stroke of a pen. If Congress will agree to make the previous tax cuts permanent, everyone could begin to plan and make sensible decisions about the future. After all, lawmakers were smart enough to realize slashing taxes would energize the economy. Certainly they're smart enough to realize that a huge tax increase in 2010 would be a devastating mistake.
(...)
Our current tax code is 17,000 pages long and includes more than 1,100 forms and publications. It's so confusing, taxpayers are forced to spend almost $200 billion each year just to comply with it. Even IRS employees don't understand the laws they're supposed to enforce. Several years ago, a General Accounting Office survey found IRS employees gave incorrect tax advice half the time.
We could save time, money and trouble with a flat tax. We could file our returns on a form the size of a postcard. And we would bring down marginal tax rates, without decreasing the amount of tax revenue that comes in.
posted by Miguel Noronha 5:11 da tarde
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