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IRS Taxpayer Advocate calls for Congress to reform Internal Revenue Code

by | Jan 11, 2017 | 1040, tax reform, tax regulation.

Tax season for individuals starts January 23, 2017 for the 2016 return. Unfortunately, most individuals are facing increasingly complex and confusing tax laws. It is not just businesses that are suffering. The National Taxpayer Advocate has called for Congress to simplify the Internal Revenue Code which takes individuals and businesses more than 6 billion hours a year to comply with filing.

The idea espoused by the Taxpayer Advocate the Congress was to have a neutral Tax Code and cut individual tax rates as well as business tax rates. This means that many of the exclusions, exemptions, deductions and credits would be eliminated as the trade-off for simplification and rate reduction.The recommendation is that Congress start with the tax code without any reductions and then only add back deductions, such as exclusion of capital gains on home sales, if the benefits outweigh the complexity of the provision. The idea is to have a simpler compliance mechanism and use tax is for collecting revenue for the government rather than influencing behavior.

The taxpayer advocate also criticized the Internal Revenue Service for poor service and a focus on enforcement of the tax laws rather than service and helping taxpayers. This makes sense!

see: http://www.TaxEsq.com

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