Comment: It is a pleasure that someone is looking at the tax code with sincerity. As backgroud I am a Certified Public Accountant and a Certified Financial Planner and have been in the tax preparation busines for over thirty years. The suggestions that I have will accomplish both tax simplification and President Bushs' necessity to recognize home ownership. As we all know, the tax code is used not only to collect revenue for the government, but also to create and influence public actions, i. e. interest deductions to promote home ownership. I propose that we turn tax preparation over and have a national sales tax with those individuals who earn under stated amounts (based on filing status and allowances), filing a return to be compensated by the government for paying an extra burden when thay purchase items and pay sales tax. Under this system only those who wish to take advantage of the 'rebate' need to apply. It is similar to the way welfare works. This method would also bu ised to compensate people to foster those things the government whises to promote. For homeowners, the government can sent 'rebate' chaeks based on the form 1098 which mortgage companies send out each year to both the individual and the goverment. As you can see, under this method approximately 30 million tax returns would be prepared instead of the 126 million now filed. Additionally, the savings by individual taxpayers who have their tax returns professionally prepared would be enormous. Simply stated, a national sales tax with people filing to get 'rebates' for the overbearing costs and also filing to get 'rebates' for those things the government wants to promote not only will save the country enormous amounts of money but remove the desparation some people feel at tax time. I realize I was not clear in some of this and welcome your questions. Sincerely Harvey H Lawrence Certfiied Public Accountant Certified Financial Planner |