Story of the day: TAXES!

So 2 more people have problems not paying their taxes. The first was Geithner, now Treasury Secretary. Today there was Tom Daschle, who decided to pull his name as Health and Human Services Secretary. The other was the newly created Chief Performance Officer who was to watch performance of Gov't agencies.

Let me vent for a moment on taxes. First of all we have been screwing up these past 50 -75 years because we have been taxing income. All these years while we were consuming beyond our means, we have been taxing income, instead of taxing consumption. Now that the American people have started to save and not spend what they can't afford, watch there will be a someone pushing for a Consumption tax. That's like closing the barn door after the horse has run away. But someone will promote this idea, most likely a Republican.

There is an advantage to a consumption tax. One advantage is that it doesn't require any special paperwork, or create the type of problem Daschle had today in not reporting income as he used the services of a car and driver and said he never thought about paying the tax. With the consumption tax, you pay the tax immediately when you make the purchase, as you do now with State Sales Taxes. Over time we will see where this goes. But we are moving from a Consumption society to a Savings society because of the current economic crisis. Now would not be the time to move to Consumption taxes. But a simpler tax code surely would help.