Friday, April 15, 2005

Tax Day, 2005.

This Pulitzer Prize cartoon by the late, great, Jeff MacNelly pretty much sums it up. My own irritation for this day was the State of Michigan's 1040 booklet proudly announcing the option for e-filing, only to find their website a listing of other sites at which to e-file...for a fee. So let me understand this...I have the privledge of paying to make the state's tax collection easier? Who knows how much this financially-troubled state could save in paperwork costs if they hired a couple of hotshot programmers to whip together the state's own e-filing service. They withdrew "Tele-Tax" after only a single year, yet it made doing state taxes (admittedly fairly simple) as easy a writing a postcard.

The time has arrived for a profoundly simpler state and federal tax code and tax-filing system. Let's free the enormous amount of money now being consumed in the process of tax payment and collection to instead create new business and grow our state's economy.

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