Tax day, almost!

Today’s the big day, sort of

“Enter all amounts deferred (including earnings on amounts deferred) that are includible in income under section 409A because the NQDC plan fails to satisfy the requirements of section 409A. Do not include amounts properly reported on a Form 1099-MISC, corrected Form 1099-MISC, Form W-2, or Form W-2c for a prior year. Also, do not include amounts that are considered to be subject to a substantial risk of forfeiture for purposes of section 409A. For more information, see Regulations sections 1.409A-1, -2, -3, and -6; and Notice 2008-115.”

—Instructions for something or another taken from IRS.gov this year

CAN YOU imagine what kind of degree, or multiple degrees, it would take to understand that nonsense? We’d rather read instructions to rewire the garage. In the Mongolian language.

Try it yourself. Go to IRS.gov and pick out any of the word-filled and number-filled pages of this kind of stuff. And just laugh at all the documents and instructions and forms put there for your entertainment. Because you can only laugh at it. You cannot understand it. Does anybody believe that the person who wrote the above paragraph had any intention of regular folks understanding it? Writers at the IRS don’t write to be understood, they write to be legal. Which may be the reason that only experienced CPAs and tax attorneys could find anything in that so-called writing to hold onto. The rest of us are just thrown overboard to look for an Ararat. Good luck.

Today is tax day. Well, almost. It’s April 15. And that’s the traditional tax day in most of these United States.

Because today is a Saturday, and because tomorrow is a Sunday, and because the day after Sunday is almost always a Monday, and because this coming Monday is a holiday in Washington, D.C., (celebrating the day Lincoln freed the slaves in the Capital City), you have until Tuesday night to file. But why go into details? Soon we’ll be sounding like IRS code writers.

Yes, yes, We the People might complain loudly enough, but most Americans aren’t anti-tax. Smart folks know that good roads, modern schools, and stealthy battleships aren’t conjured out of thin air. But does it have to be so difficult to pay those taxes? Talk about rubbing salt into the wound. If the government is going to compel us all to fork over hard-earned money, shouldn’t it make things easier?

Every April, Americans are told to not only fill out the proper tax forms, understand all the instructions, and make the correct payment to the government—but sign and swear that all is in proper order on penalty of perjury.

On penalty of perjury! Some of us wouldn’t bet a nickel that we’d have everything right on our tax forms. But to throw us in jail if we don’t add line 17 and line 49 subtracted by our first-born’s birthday? When did we sign up for that gamble?

No wonder most Americans use an accountant, a tax preparer or a computer program to handle the job. It might help ordinary taxpayers sleep o’ night to pay the extra fee so that said preparer deals with the IRS in case of an audit. After all, after reading some of those instructions, would you want to swear to anything without professional backup?

The IRS has agents on standby to help, of course. But reports in recent years showed that the IRS can’t answer most of the calls, much less all of them. And when help is on the line, even top officials with the IRS called customer service “abysmal.” (Their word.) So if you’re lucky enough to get through on the phone, you might not even get the right advice. From the IRS.

And you’re supposed to pledge everything on your tax form is right? Again, on the penalty of perjury.

SO WHAT’S the answer? Here’s one: Don’t mend it, end it. Abolish the tax code and start over. The Internal Revenue Code doesn’t need to be changed. Take it behind the barn and kill it with an ax. But give the federal government some time to come up with a simple, fair substitute for the current code. And give Congress and the president a deadline. How about by Dec. 31? That would be incentive enough. And they’d have to come up with a better tax code, because this one would be gone.

Even a flat tax, if it didn’t start till incomes reached, say, $30,000 a year, might be fairer than the monster we’ve got on our hands now.

Speaking of now . . . . Now, we’re told, is no time to fiddle with the tax system, not in this uncertain economy. And when the economy improves, as it will sure as there is a business cycle, we’ll be told that now is no time to fiddle with the tax system because everything is going so well. And this whole cumbersome apparatus on the back of the American taxpayer will only grow more cumbersome.

That’s why there is no time like the present to abolish the Internal Revenue Code.

And once again, as is our annual custom on Tax Day (almost), we suggest just that. This year let’s do it.