The Enterprise Value Tax is unprecedented, punitive, and has no justification in the tax code.
'Simplifying' the tax code is a priority mainly for people who make enough money to want to avoid paying taxes, and who make their money by means unorthodox enough to make avoiding taxes possible and desirable.
Everyone now has a sacred cow in the tax code. For my money, the most sacred thing of all is our country and its growth, but the sacred cows have turned into a pack of wolves.
The Clinton tax increase - which was an increase in taxes primarily on upper-income people - not only made the tax code more nearly progressive, it preceded one of the most productive economic periods in American life.
We have a tax code whose complications and levels of unfairness and levels of choosing people to give tax breaks to and choosing people to deny them to is thousands of pages long with endless complications and unbelievable manipulations by everybody.
What we need to do is replace the entire tax code. I do not think it makes sense to say, 'Let's just grab money from, quote, the wealthy'... The issue is the tax code's rotten and we should start truly over with a simple code that is fair and transparent.
The tax code is very inefficient. Both the personal tax code and the corporate tax code. By closing loopholes and lowering rates, you could increase the efficiency of the tax code and create more incentives for people to invest.
We all want a simpler code, but tax reform is about much more. It is about ensuring that everyone pays their fair share. The tax code is also used to promote behavior that we as a nation support, such as home ownership or charitable contributions.
Before we start making blanket statements about abolishing the IRS, I think it's important to focus on what the tax code for the 21st century should look like.
I do see great opportunity to make reforms to our tax code, making it simpler, fairer and removing corporate loopholes.
