Tag: taxes

How Much Waste Is In The $1.5 Trillion Spending Bill

The bill is 2,700 pages – the length of ten books.

Congress had less than one day to read the bill before they voted. President Biden has already signed off — a $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill. Magic!

Do we really have a representative republic if our representatives don’t even know what they are voting on?

Here are just a few examples of what was in the bill: 

  • $1 million for a “farm-to-refrigerator training facility” in Pennsylvania
  • $2 million for George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change
  • $2.5 million for a museum in Vermont.
  • $3 million for a fisherman’s coop facility in Guam

These examples represent only four of 4,400 earmarks in the bill. 

Earmarks are the ‘currency of corruption in Congress.’ It’s legal bribery to give away member pet projects for votes.

(It took 367 pages alone just to list the earmarks!)

Republicans cheered a 6% increase in defense spending. Democrats cheered a 7% increase in social services and executive administration spending. 

And, presto, you — the taxpayer — are paying for all of it.

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The IRS already has all your income tax data – so why do Americans still have to file their taxes?

Doing taxes in the U.S. is notoriously complicated and costly. And it gets even worse when there are delays and backlogs, making it especially hard to reach the Internal Revenue Service for assistance.

But to me this raises an important question: Why should taxpayers have to navigate the tedious, costly tax filing system at all?

The case for a ‘simple return’

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan promised a “return-free” tax system in which half of all Americans would never fill out a tax return again. Under the framework, taxpayers with simple returns would automatically receive a refund or a letter detailing any tax owed. Taxpayers with more complicated returns would use the system in place today.

In 2006, President Barack Obama’s chief economist, Austan Goolsbee, suggested a “simple return,” in which taxpayers would receive already completed tax forms for their review or correction. Goolsbee estimated his system would save taxpayers more than US billion a year in tax preparation fees.

Though never implemented, the two proposals illustrate what we all know: No one enjoys filling out tax forms.

So why do we have to?

As an expert on the U.S. tax system, I see America’s costly and time-consuming tax reporting system as a consequence of its relationship with the commercial tax preparation industry, which lobbies Congress to maintain the status quo.

A costly and time-consuming system

Return-free filing is not difficult.

At least 30 countries permit return-free filing, including Denmark, Sweden, Spain and the United Kingdom.

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Your Tax Dollars at Work: Ukrainian Officials Keep Getting Caught Fleeing Country with Suitcases Full of Cash and Euros

The US Senate passed a bipartisan $1.5 trillion bill on March 10th that included $13.6 billion in aid to Ukraine.

Chuck Schumer touted the aid to Ukraine and pointed to it as a pressing reason for the Senate to quickly pass the massive $1.5 trillion spending bill. This was the same week that inflation hit 7.9% in the US — the highest inflation rate in 40 years.

So where is the money going? Does anyone know? Does anyone care?

Here’s one answer.

The wife of former Ukrainian MP Ihor Kotvitskyi declared 28 million dollars and 1.3 million euros when entering Hungary.

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