Comment: I am delighted to find that your panel is looking at this problem, and is asking for public input. Tax return preparation is 'WAY TOO DIFFICULT, and unnecessarily so. And I don't mean the itemized deductions. You need to TRUNCATE several forms entirely and simplify rules. My pet peeves are: 1. Form 8271, Investor Reporting of Tax Shelter Numbers -- is one of the most useless, bureaucratic, duplicative, and obsolete forms ever invented. It serves no purpose anymore and contains no tax-related numbers. DELETE it in its entirety. 2. Schedule E's Form 8582, Passive Activity Loss Limitations, with its seven Worksheets -- Far too complex and incomprehensible, and provides little bang for the buck. DELETE it in its entirety. Replace its essential tax loss limit by simply limiting the total Schedule E loss to $25,000, like is done on Schedule D, with excess losses carried forward to future years. 3. Schedule D's capital loss limit -- Has been $3000 for my whole life, I think. Time to increase the limit, probably to the same $25,000 as for Schedule E. 4. Schedule E's depreciation rules as they apply to Alternative Minimum Tax. -- Stop making us carry two separate sets of depreciation records. Use the exact same depreciation schedules for regular and AMT calculations. There is no benefit to making us carry excess depreciation records forty years into the future. 5. Flat Tax (Alternative Minimum Tax) -- I feel the reason Congress has not updated the AMT to keep it from bothering the middle class is that they secretly want the Flat Tax to replace the regular income tax, but they are too cowardly to admit it. If they simply neglect it, nature will take its course and the Flat Tax will eventually take over the whole system. In the meantime, Congress can play games at passing more and more credits, exemptions, and deductions for the regular tax system, and their impacts will be more and more meaningless because the Flat Tax will take over sooner and sooner. -- I often do my own taxes, and it would be impossible without my computer. As it is, I spend weeks at it each year. What a waste of my (and the nation's) time and resources! William B Rendahl, Trustee Rendahl Family Trust U/A 3-6-1990 2116 W 236th Place, Torrance CA 90501 rendahl@earthlink.net Phone: 310-530-6384; FAX: 310-534-0461 |