In 1776 we fought to stop undue taxation burdens. Now in 2009 the founding fathers would not believe the nightmare inflicted on citizens every year come April. Worse, no one, not even the IRS and politicians, really know who is paying what tax anymore, with over 100,000 books of tax regulations. This is making the American economy uncompetitive compared internationally with billions being spent annually on bureaucracy pursuing citizens and citizens pursuing paperwork and making citizens live the American nightmare instead of the American Dream.
Yet the solution to this has already been solved! A company called UPromise has figured out how to take someones annual credit card transactions and log them and mark them against approved products. The exact same technology can be used to free Americans from taxation nightmares. In the same way that UPromise does now - a small business can register a business credit card - and then all transactions on that are eligible for business accounting purposes. Automatically they will qualify for whatever tax incentives, right-offs, etc apply. And this is self-regulating. Stores can mark products and services that can be charged on a business card for tax purposes. Instead of auditing innocent citizens, the IRS can then instead have field agents checking on card use. Simple and direct.
Come April each year - you then have your transactions for the complete year automatically reported for you - all expenses and revenues logged - you can simply go online to verify the totals.
Will the current IRS implement this? Of course not! They will stall, block and delay for ever to maintain their current crazy systems. We will need a new agency - IRS Transformation Agency - completely separate - to stand this up - fresh ideas - culture change - and get it working and then teach the IRS how to run it.
But once this is all running then Congress and the people will love it - because we will know EXACTLY what each change in taxation sectors, incentives and industry will be, centralized, automated and fair and open. And when you go shopping every day you will be able to see exactly what items and services qualify and where, no more guessing or hoping that something is deductable.
Similarly for charities - they can immediately charge donations and everyone have complete visibility.
People are looking for something to believe in to stimulate the economy. The beauty of this idea is that the technology already exists and works, it can be phased in quickly with selected sectors of industry getting these first, and it will show that government really cares about making citizens lives fairer and easier.
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