What We Learned From Tax Season

What We Learned From Tax Season

• Nothing if you have an extension. However, even though you have an extension, don’t let current year planning wait until last year’s return is done.

• Tax season will come again next year – prepare for it. Organize your records to make the process easier.

• Plan to reduce this year’s tax. Schedule a meeting with your tax professional and have a line by line review of your return to determine if you can do anything today to reduce tomorrow’s taxes.

• If you are subject to the ObamaCare and/or rich person’s tax have a 2013 tax projection prepared and find out how much extra it will cost you, and plan for the additional payments, and find out what you might be able to do to reduce your taxes.

• Taxes are involved, confusing and for many people indecipherable. Our Congress people have not served us well with what they did, but we sat back and let it happen. Become a participant in the process – write to them demanding they develop a tax simplification plan, and don’t re-elect them if they fail to respond. I know you are thinking it won’t matter. It won’t if ten people write, or ten thousand, but if ten million do, it will matter. We count, but we have to make our frustrations felt. Write to them! I will as soon as I finish this blog – I will write to the President, Secretary of the Treasury, my Congressman and two Senators. I will mail it in an envelope with a stamp (total postage for 5 letters is $2.30). If I don’t receive a response within two months, I’ll write again.

FYI, here is my letter:

Dear ____________________,

Tax season has just ended and it made me especially aware of how complicated the tax structure is. Please work on enacting a revenue neutral tax method that will simplify individual tax preparation.

In particular, a goal should be to have a tax system that is simple enough for the average wage earner to prepare their own return. Additionally, the Tax Code should require our Congress people (those that make the laws) to prepare at least one tax return themselves – it doesn’t need to be their own; it could be their child’s, grandchild’s or a niece or nephew’s. The purpose of this is not to punish, but to create awareness of the complexity caused by Legislative actions.

Our tax system is based on voluntary compliance and that is being thwarted by the inability of most people to prepare their own returns and accordingly, understand how the tax process works.

Thank you for your attention to this. I would appreciate a response, an acknowledgement of the receipt of this letter, and some visible credible action on your part to simplify the tax process.

Respectfully,

____________________________