by Michael J. Graetz
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| List Price: | $30.00 |
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Product Description
To most Americans, the United States tax code has become a vast and confounding puzzle. In 1940, the instructions to the form 1040 were about four pages long. Today, they have ballooned to more than a hundred pages, and the form itself contains more than 10 schedules and 20 worksheets. The complete tax code totals about 2.8 million words, about four times the length of "War and Peace". In this intriguing book, Michael Graetz maintains that our tax code has become a tangle of loopholes, paperwork, and inconsistencies, a massive social programme that fails tests of simplicity and fairness. More importantly, our tax system has failed to keep pace with the changing economy, creating burdens and wastes of resources that weigh our nation down. Graetz offers a solution. Imagine a world in which most Americans pay no income tax at all, and those who do enjoy a far simpler tax process; all this without decreasing government revenues or removing key incentives for employer-sponsored health care plans and pensions. As "100 Million Unnecessary Returns" adeptly and clearly describes, this world is within our grasp.
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Average Customer Review:
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Competitive Tax plan makes sense, 2008-03-12
This book is a pleasure to get through and does an excellent job assessing the current state of tax reform. His competitive tax plan makes quite a bit of sense too. Shifting a good portion of federal revenue to a VAT takes over 150 million individuals off the IRS rolls and simplifies the entire system. I worry that the implementation process would be too complicated to reap the benefits of the simpler system, and that this plan lacks the proper advocates in Congress, but that does not mean you shouldn't read this book and understand his plan. The VAT is a tried and true system throughout the EU, and could help the US in numerous ways.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Tax Policy Made Interesting, 2008-01-18
Michael Graetz makes tax policy almost enjoyable. Graetz never forgets that the tax system's primary purpose is to raise the money needed to finance the government services that the nation wants in the least harmful way. Or, as the French economist Colbert put it, "The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing." Graetz provides a realistic assessment of our current tax structure and deftly identifies the failings of faddish proposals, such as the "fair tax" and the "flat tax." His proposal to reduce the number of people required to pay income tax and to add a value-added tax to our nation's fiscal arsenal deserves serious consideration by conservatives and liberals alike.
Paul N. Van de Water
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