DECLINE & FALL OF INCOME TAX CL - Hardcover

Graetz, Michael J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393040615 ISBN 13: 9780393040616

Verlag: WW Norton & Co, 1997

Inhaltsangabe

Cuts through the hype to tell you what tax reform proposals will really do to your wallet. To cheering crowds, politicians announce plans to dismantle the "IRS as we know it" and replace it with flat taxes and consumption taxes. But if we burn our 1040 forms, will we really be better off? In this trenchant book a distinguished law professor who served in the Treasury in the Bush administration takes a no-holds-barred look at our leaders' compulsion to use the tax system for short-term political ends. With telling anecdotes of politicking past and present, Michael Graetz shows how Congress lost the public's trust on tax policy: taxing more and more of people's stagnant buying power during the high-inflation years of the '70s and '80s, requiring ever more complicated tax forms and filings, and continuing to promise reform while powerful corporations and the rich dodge paying their fair share all while failing to deliver the goods in a tough economy. Taking on current proposals for tax reform, Graetz cuts through the rhetoric and crunches the numbers to reveal that ordinary taxpayers will foot a disproportionate share of the bill for flat and consumption taxes. Most of all, he demonstrates how PACS have become a legalized form of influence peddling that especially corrupts the political process where taxes are concerned. Breaking down the political deals and bureaucratic stupidities that have made the tax system so burdensome, he points the way to a saner, fairer system.

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Reseña del editor

How has it happened that ordinary Americans have come to regard the federal income tax as unfair, and tax protesters as heroes rather than deadbeats? This trenchant and timely book locates the answers in both the substance of the Internal Revenue Code and the political process that created and feeds this monstrous law. It shows plainly how the income tax has been a political football in the battle over every major social problem or government program; how government allowed its complexities - and its inflationary bite - to grow with no thought of their impact on taxpayers; and, most of all, how a Congress dependent on PAC funds has become incapable of fashioning a tax system that does not end tax breaks for special interests. The book also looks closely at the various flat-tax and consumption-tax proposals now being considered, and reveals that these taxes are neither as fair nor as simple as their advocates claim. Discussing the income-tax system in rich, anecdotal context, this book also points the way to tax reforms that are simple, sensible, and fair.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: WW Norton & Co
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0393040615
• ISBN 13: 9780393040616
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Sprache: Englisch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar