Everyday the frustration grows. Everyday, more people sign on to do the right thing: get rid of the IRS and our idiotic tax code.
Most Americans strongly favor such a move. The few who do not favor such a move are those who are somehow benefitting from the current set-up. Take for example Barack Obama. Part of his campaign platform relies on manipulating the current tax code so as to increase taxes on the employers while decreasing taxes on others. Good for buying votes, bad for the economy and for the businesses that have to spend even more time and money dealing with the new complications of a modified tax code.
I'm not picking on B. Hussein Obama specifically, but his Presidential campaign underscores my point. He is an example of someone who will benefit under the current system (i.e. it could bring him more power) while the rest of us suffer by having to pay more so he can get his benefit.
Charles Ulrich is one of the many Americans out here in reality who has had to deal with an invasive and abusive IRS. But, he did something very few have done: he fought back and won.
From Americans For Fair Taxation:
| The accountant from Baxter, Minn., challenged the method the IRS has used for more than 20 years to tax shares and cash distributed by mutual life insurance firms to their policyholders when they reorganize as public companies. A federal court recently agreed with his interpretation. ... The dispute arose when more than 30 mutual life insurance companies became publicly traded corporations in the late 1990s and earlier this decade, in a process known as "demutualization." ... All told, roughly 30 million policyholders received distributions, Ulrich estimates. MetLife Inc. provided over $7 billion of stock to about 11 million policyholders when it went public in 2000, while Prudential distributed $12.5 billion in stock to another 11 million. The IRS held that the recipients hadn't paid anything for the shares and owed taxes on the full amount when the shares were sold. Cash distributions also were fully taxable, the IRS said. That didn't sound right to Ulrich, 72, an accountant for 49 years. He began researching the issue in 2001, when he received shares from two companies, Prudential and Indianapolis Life. Ulrich concluded that policyholders had paid for their ownership rights through their premiums so the distributions should have been tax-free. That could make a significant difference in what a taxpayer owes. If a company distributed shares worth $30 and a recipient subsequently sold them at $32, under the IRS' view they would pay taxes on all $32. Under Ulrich's interpretation, they would owe taxes only on the $2 per share. |
One of Ulrich's clients sued the IRS:
| Judge Francis Allegra of the Court of Federal Claims in Washington sided with Fisher and called the IRS' view "illogical" in an Aug. 6 decision. He ordered the agency to refund $5,725 in taxes plus interest to the trust overseen by Fisher. |
Now, before you start going off on how $5000 is a reletively small amount, remember that the principle here is how an abusive IRS can be defeated on other fronts as well.
This is one of the many reasons I support the FairTax.
You can access the complete article on-line here:
Judge Calls IRS Unreasonable, CPA Wins Case After Threats
Christopher S. Rugaber
Yahoo News via Americans For Fair Taxation
Aug 24, 2008
And you can learn more about the FairTax here:
Americans For Fair Taxation
And here are some more example of what Socialized medicine will bring for us. From Merrill Matthews at TownHall:
| Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, in a rare moment of honesty on what he’d really like to do about health care reform, recently asserted that if we were starting from scratch he would probably choose a single-payer health care system. That’s a system in which people pay higher taxes and the government pays most medical bills. Obama’s not alone in that opinion. Filmmaker Michael Moore took his “Sicko” audience to England, among other places, where we learned that doctors in that single-payer system made good salaries, had nice homes and cars, and patients were very satisfied. But anyone who reads the English press will find a different message, including waiting lines, angry patients, rationed and often subquality care. Consider these recent news stories about England’s National Health Service (NHS) quoted directly from the British press. • Twice Katie asked for a [Pap] smear test, but was told she was “too young” to need one. Now 24, she is dying from cervical cancer, one of many young women who have fallen victim to a scandalous change in health policy. (London’s Daily Mail, June) • A man with terminal cancer has been refused a drug by the NHS that could extend his life — despite offering to pay part of the cost himself. . . . David Swain's offer to meet the monthly £2,000 cost of Erbitux was refused, he said, because the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence [a government body] ruled it was too expensive. (Yorkshire Post, March, emphasis added) • Health service dentists have been forced to go on holiday or spend time on the golf course this month despite millions of patients being denied dental care. . . . Many [dentists] have fulfilled their annual work quotas allotted by the National Health Service and have been turning patients away because they are not paid to do extra work. This is despite the fact that more than 7m[illion] people in Britain are unable to find an NHS dentist. (The Times of London, March) |
This is what awaits us if we vote to destroy our privatized health care system, which, despite its many faults, is light-years better than any socialized system.
You can read more Socialized Medicine horror stories at the following website:
Big Government Health
Click on the "Health Care Horror Stories" Link.
You can access the complete column on-line here:
The Failures Of Government-Run Healthcare
Merrill Matthews
TownHall.com
August 26, 2008
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