USD College Republicans

Rangel can't even negotiate the tax code!

The WSJ has a great column about how Charlie Rangel, the man in charge of the entire tax code, can't even figure it out!

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House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel of New York admitted last week that in recent years he has underpaid his taxes by about $10,000. Republicans are demanding that he step down as chairman pending an Ethics Committee investigation, but we're more sympathetic. Charlie is a victim of the tax code he helped to write.

His lawyer says Mr. Rangel flubbed his tax return by failing to record some $75,000 of rental income he received from a beach house he owns at a posh Dominican Republic resort. Mr. Rangel professes to have made an honest mistake, and says "I personally feel that I have done nothing morally wrong." He explained that he didn't know how much income he received from the property because his Dominican business partners would "start speaking Spanish."

Plenty of Americans know how he feels since the IRS tax form might as well be in Spanish. The tax code now runs to some 67,000 pages, and Mr. Rangel has probably written a few thousand himself in his 38 years on Capitol Hill. If even the nation's top tax writer can't figure out what to declare as income, and what not to declare, how can the rest of us be expected to get it right?

Not that the IRS will show Joe Taxpayer any mercy. In most disputes over even honest mistakes, the tax collectors presume guilt. Mr. Rangel is also one of those who like to denounce corporations that shield income overseas. He'd better hope both the IRS and his House colleagues treat him with more forbearance than he and they treat private citizens or businesses. Who knows, maybe Mr. Rangel will even take this embarrassment as new motivation to work with the next President on tax reform. How do you say "flat tax" in Spanish?

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This is hilarious!

-Matt Hittle

Posted at 10:07PM Sep 14, 2008 by College Republicans in Taxes  |  Comments[0]

And we thought the YOUNG generation had a sense of entitlement!

Here's another I wrote for FreedomWorks:

In an article over the summer, (http://www.newsweek.com/id/39155), Robert J. Samuelson discusses the fact that the Baby Boomer generation will force the federal government to pay out of the nose in entitlements for the elderly in the coming years.
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"The 2030 projections are daunting. To keep federal spending stable as a share of the economy would mean eliminating all defense spending and most other domestic programs (for research, homeland security, the environment, etc.). To balance the budget with existing programs at their present economic shares would require, depending on assumptions, tax increases of 30 percent to 50 percent—or budget deficits could quadruple."
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Golly gee, I’m just excited as can be to shoulder the aging Baby Boomer population with my money! Please, federal government, take my income to fund someone else- Lord knows I don’t need it to start a family or anything silly like that!
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-Matt Hittle

Posted at 12:46PM Nov 29, 2007 by College Republicans in Taxes  |  Comments[0]

Armey on Tax Reform

My former boss Dick Armey has an op-ed on conservative website TownHall.com today. You can find it here:
http://townhall.com/columnists/DickArmey/2007/11/27/a_taxing_problem?page=full&comments=true

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A couple of choice quotes:

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"People in Washington get ornery when you try to talk about tax reform. They'll call you crazy, irresponsible, or worse. But that's just their fear and anxiety talking. For many politicians, the tax code is a source of power, allowing them an easy way to dole out money to their favorite constituents—conveniently funded by you, the taxpayer."

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"After all, taxes have been around since Biblical times. But the Good Book, in all its wisdom, only devotes a few lines to taxes. The U.S. government, on the other hand, saw fit to spend three times as many words on its Internal Revenue Code as are in the entire King James Bible. Now, I'm no theologian, but it seems like we might do better to follow the Lord's lead on this one rather than the IRS."

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"If limited government conservatives are going to recapture Congress and the White House, they will need a broad national vision that appeals beyond the traditional base to also win the support of independent voters and moderate Democrats. A common sense and honest flat tax plan might be just the corner stone to that vision."

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-Matt Hittle

Posted at 11:52AM Nov 29, 2007 by College Republicans in Taxes  |  Comments[0]