The Double Trouble of Taxation

By Ron Paul

22/04/08 "ICH' -- - Taxes were on the forefront of many
Americans’ minds this week as they scrambled to meet the April 15th
deadline to file their returns. Tax policy in this country hurts
taxpayers twice – once when they pay taxes, and then when the
government spends the money. Americans are sick and tired of the
financial burden and the endless forms to fill out. To add insult to
injury, after collecting this money the government does some very
detrimental things to the economy.

The burden of complying with the income tax is tremendous. Since its
inception in 1913, the tax code has gone from 400 pages to over 67,000.
The Tax Foundation estimates that around $265 billion dollars and 6
billion hours are spent just on compliance. That expense amounts to
about 22 cents of every dollar the IRS collects. Imagine the boon to
the economy if we spent that time and money expanding our businesses
and creating jobs!

Aside from the direct loss of money and productivity, the funds from
the income tax enable the government to do some very destructive
things, such as vastly over-regulating economic activity, making it
difficult to earn money in the first place. The federal government
funds over 50 agencies, departments and commissions that formulate
rules and regulations. These bureaucracies operate with little to no
oversight from the people or Congress and generate around 4,000 new
rules every year and operate at a cost of about 40 billion dollars.
There are some 75,000 pages of regulations in the Federal Register that
Americans are expected to know and abide by. Complying with these
governmental regulations costs American businesses more than one
trillion dollars per year, according to a study by Mark Crain for the
Small Business Administration. This complicated system drives
production to other countries and shrinks our job market here at home.

Big government is destructive when it takes your money and when it
spends it. There is no economic benefit to supporting a government
sector as massive as ours. In fact, this country thrived for well over
100 years without an income tax. Today, if you took away the income
tax, the government would still have revenue from other sources equal
to total government spending in 1990, when government was still too
big. $1.2 trillion should be more than enough to fund a government
operating within its constitutional confines, and that is exactly what
we need to get back to.

I have introduced legislation many times to abolish the IRS and the
income tax. It is fundamentally un-American to require taxpayers to
testify against themselves and be considered guilty until proven
innocent. Abolishing the IRS altogether would trigger an avalanche of
real growth in the economy.

With these financial hard times only just beginning, this would be the
most efficient and logical way to get our economy growing again, and
Americans would need not dread the 15th of April every year.

Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress of Texas.