Citizens Against Government Waste Statement on Tax Reform Kickoff

Source: Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW)

Washington, D.C. - September 3, 2017 (The Ponder News) -- Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) President Tom Schatz issued the following statement echoing President Trump’s kickoff speech on the urgent need for comprehensive tax reform that lowers rates and eliminates loopholes:

“President Trump’s tax plan will reduce taxes, create jobs, simplify the tax code, and put more money back into the taxpayers’ pockets. There is a simple choice on tax reform: Either the taxpayers’ hard-earned money will continue to be sent to Washington and enter a maze of bureaucratic inefficiency and ineptitude, or the tax code can be fixed and rates can be lowered. The American people will then make their own decisions about how to spend and invest their own money.

“The President’s plan would reduce both the individual and business tax rates, which will be particularly helpful to the middle class and small businesses. The U.S. cannot remain competitive with other nations with a tax rate that is 16.4 percentage points higher than the world average. His plan is intended to result in economic growth of at least 3 percent and create millions of new jobs. It deserves prompt consideration by Congress so that Americans can get immediate relief from burdensome taxes and a complex tax code as soon as possible, and fill out their tax returns in the future on a short form that should be no longer than one page.”

Background:

Taxpayers spend 8.9 billion hours annually complying with the tax code.

Tax code compliance costs the economy $234.4 billion per year.

The tax code is 10 million words and is more than six times as long as it was in 1955.

94 percent of taxpayers paid someone else or used software to prepare their tax forms.

The instructions alone for the typical 1040 tax form used by most Americans has grown from just two pages in 1935, to 241 pages today.
Citizens Against Government Waste is the nation's largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.