Re:White House initiative to encourage entrepreneurship
by Natsu on Monday January 31, 2011 @03:37PM
(#2163065)
> Broadly speaking, they're doing it wrong. The solution to a too-complicated tax code is to fix the incentives Congress has to make a complicated tax code
Controlling people's purse strings is a main source of congressional power. I don't see them giving much of that up any time soon...
Re:White House initiative to encourage entrepreneurship
by jerf on Monday January 31, 2011 @04:00PM
(#2163149)
It would take a very-well-thought out Constitutional amendment through a State-powered Constitutional Convention (since Congress isn't going to trim its own wings) at a minimum, I fear. Any one of "very-well-thought out", "Constitutional amendment", and "Constitutional Convention" seems pretty unlikely anytime soon; the combination of all even more so. Still, these are crazy times politically, who knows?
I don't mean that as a criticism of Obama specifically. There is a long history of people promising tax simplification. Very little has ever happened, quickly erased by further complexification.
(Broadly speaking, they're doing it wrong. The solution to a too-complicated tax code is to fix the incentives Congress has to make a complicated tax code, then let the problem address itself incrementally over several years. Simply burning straight for simplication without addressing the underlying problems is doomed to failure. Of course, trying to address the underlying problems is also mostly doomed to failure, so shrug.)