Comment: Laurel R. Powers 11208 No. Balboa Dr Sun City, AZ 85351 April 20, 2005 The President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform Dear Sirs: I am advising you that “I want a Fair Tax “. My reasons come from being an accountant all of my career and in the past twelve years, directly related to computer software. As an accountant, I struggled to meet the reporting requirements of our taxing system. As a Software Support Specialist, I have customers that struggle to meet those requirements. At year end, our customers and we are frazzled trying to get the W2’s reported properly. The expense to program if any changes are made in the reporting is astronomical as we deal not only with the SSA requirements but also each State and Local in about 75% of the States. The complexity of income tax reporting has gotten out of hand. As an accountant, I have always done my own taxes and some for others. But do to an error I made that took 3 plus years to clear up, I am now having my taxes done by an tax accountant who every year spends about sixty hours on Income Tax Continuing Education. This year, the fee was $290.00 for tax preparation and the only reason I incur the costs is that I have one piece of rental property and I have Roth IRA and other investments. I can handle the reporting of the rental property but when it comes to the Roth’s and investments, I am afraid if I make an error, I am in for another 3 years of hassle. I believe a Fair Tax will improve our society as the government will have more dollars to work with and the people who have all the tax loopholes will be paying their fair share. I am tired of supporting individuals who are not Americans and do not even have SS#’s but allowed to work in this country. They should be paying their fair share of taxes and would do so if there were a National Sales Tax. Since the USA is a democratic government, we need our taxing system to be democratic also. We need a “Fair Tax” System. Please help us get one. Sincerely, Laurel R. Powers |