Tax Reform

There are issues with the US Tax Code, one of which is that it is overly complex.

Now Over the years special interest groups have managed to get exemptions for a lot of special interests built in but some of these have become ingrained and popular.

Its also problematic that we make individuals file tax returns on their income and deductions which inevitably is going to lead to some of the issues we have, such as wealthy individuals able to dodge their "fair" share of taxes and others not taking advantage of things they could.

Clearly it also fails us since it doesn't provide enough funds to pay our bills.

It may be that our bills are too high, but it may just be that we aren't collecting enough.

One thing that can't be ignored in this debate is that we already spend a tremendous amount on our military and much of the military spending is simply shot or blown up with no lasting benefit.

Of course we have to have a strong enough military to protect this nation, but we are one of the few countries in the world in a relatively safe location.  

Assuming Canada and Mexico don't become excessively warlike we are extremely difficult to attack with conventional forces and most of our resources are devoted to force projection in foreign lands.

This is expensive and history shows us that many nations have declined trying to maintain strong military that they had to borrow to support.

Somehow the debate in this country is that we borrow to pay for other things like benefits and entitlements while we don't attribute that borrowing to military spending.

Well what we spend on defense generally is more than the deficit and in 2017 its more than twice the deficit.  Now clearly we aren't going to make drastic reductions to defense, but the last surplus we experience coincided with the peace dividend under President Clinton.

So what is actually needed in tax reform?  Maybe we really do need to reduce our spending to what we collect or increase our collections to what we spend.  It would also be good to simplify our tax codes and I would be in favor of a system that was consumption based instead of income based, it would be easier to enforce and collect.

What is most likely though is some tinkering, some added complexity, some arguments over sacred cows and not much done to address the issue of balancing the budget.

Probably not much better than what we already have.