White House to Tackle the Tax Code

In the biggest act of hypocrisy to date, the White House announced today that it would form a new task force to reform the US tax code.  Their hope is to recoup billions of dollars in lost revenue.

This should make us all breathe a sigh of relief.

Their goal is to address three main areas:  Tax simplification, tax loopholes and evasion, and corporate welfare.  (By corporate welfare, I assume they mean tax incentives that allow corporations to keep more of the money they actually produce themselves.)

During the White House announcement, budget chief Peter Orszag pointed to a 2005 IRS estimate that the US tax gap - the difference between what taxpayers ow and what they actually pay - exceeds 300 billion dollars a year.  He did NOT point out, however, that much of this difference was "honest mistakes" made by White House appointees using Turbo Tax.

"Three hundred billion dollars a year or more is a lot of money, and we are interested in being as aggressive as possible to reduce that number," Orszag said.  He did not state whether or not part of that strategy was keeping as many tax cheats as close as possible to the administration.

I wonder if this "tax reform" will increase taxes on small businesses who provide most of the jobs in the country?   Just a thought.