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Last
week, President Clinton unveiled a wish list of new tax credits that he
would like to see enacted by Congress. Congress, in the form of Bill
Archer, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee (the group
responsible for writing our “simple” tax laws), replied that since
2000 is an election year, there probably wouldn’t be any major tax
legislation passed for a while. After all, we wouldn’t want any of our
elected representatives voting on controversial tax laws in a year when
their constituents are actually paying attention to what they are doing.
Anyway,
one of my favorite tax credits that our President is pushing for is a $10
credit for people who file their tax return electronically. Representative
Archer’s response to this credit was, “What’s next? A tax credit for
good penmanship?” I quite agree. Tax credits may be getting a bit out of
hand. But in case Congress wants to seriously consider new and bizarre tax
credits, such as the electronic filing credit, here are my nominees for
new credits to kick off the millennium:
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A
tax credit for parents of children who have perfect attendance at
school for the entire school year. If we’re going to develop a
nation of new taxpayers, the first thing we need to do is get them
educated, so they can learn how to earn a living and pay for the
Social Security for all of the hard-working, latent hippie baby
boomers. The tax credit checks could be mailed directly to the
children, as extra incentive to attend school (as if paying
astronomical rates of Social Security tax for the rest of their lives
isn’t incentive enough).
-
A
tax credit for people who go out and vote. I keep hearing that voter
apathy is at an all-time high, but nobody does anything about it. If
we’re ever going to get people in office who will pass laws like
those suggested in this column, or maybe even try to get people out of
office who continue to encourage over-complication of the tax laws, we
need to have taxpayers cast their votes in all available elections.
Maybe we can’t make voting fun, but at least we can make it
lucrative. There are many places in the country (Chicago and Miami
come to mind) where people get paid to cast votes. Why not make it a
nationwide practice?
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Tax
credits for reading books. The Marion County Public Library provides
little prizes for children who read books in the summer. All you have
to do to get a prize is check out the book, then take it to the
librarian and say you read the book (it’s wise to let at least a few
hours pass between these two events). We could extend this policy to a
national level and have people list on their tax return all the books
they read in the past year. If the IRS doesn’t want to go by the
honor system, book reports could be required along with the tax
return.
-
A
weight loss tax credit. Everybody knows that we are the fattest nation
on earth. This is evidenced by the fact that the United States is
sinking into the ocean faster than any other food-eating country. Many
different ploys have been tried to get people to lose weight, like
making chocolates that look and feel like chocolate but don’t quite
taste like chocolate, and encouraging people to drink milk shakes for
lunch every day until they look like Cindy Crawford. I say, pay us to
lose weight! This is just one more worthwhile area into which the
government ought to get involved. Everybody weighs in on January 1st,
then again on December 31st. Let’s have a tax credit for
every pound lost.
These
are just a few of the good ideas I have that could go a long way toward
making people look forward to filing their tax returns. There’s no rule
that says we can’t have tax laws like these. As long as we’re going to
keep making the tax laws more complicated, we might as well enjoy
ourselves while we do it.
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