Editor:
A friend asked me recently, “Did you know that there are more pages in the U.S. Tax Code than there are pages in all the publications in the Library of Congress?”
I was not surprised, just outraged, like we all should be.
I won’t preach to the guardians of our unholy federal tax system about the long overdue need for a flat rate tax, but I will speak to the issue of the injustice of double and triple taxation standards in our tax code.
The taxing of the dividends and interest is a classic example of an unjust double taxation standard.
Congress should not even consider raising the tax rate on dividends for 2011. What they should consider is the elimination of all double taxation standards, especially the ones on dividends and interest.
In closing, retirees, senior citizens and working people depend on this income for their everyday expenses.
This is not a wealth tax; it is an unfair injustice that never should have been written into the tax code.
Chet Hejduk
Waterford, Ohio
In the interest of fighting wild hyperbole…
A Google search for the length of the U.S. Tax Code results in estimates from a few thousand to 75,000 pages, depending on font size, margins, and the like. By comparison, Amazon lists the Encyclopedia Britannica at 32,640 pages in 32 volumes.
While this certainly makes the tax code a long read and excessively complex for the average person, it in no way approaches the volume of the Library of Congress, which held approximately 145 million items at the end of 2009, including something in the neighborhood of 30 million books (each of which certainly contain more than one page).
Without debating the merit of the claims regarding the validity or propriety of the taxes mentioned, the premise of the letter begins with a gross exaggeration or misunderstanding of fact.