{"id":1002,"date":"2014-02-25T19:04:12","date_gmt":"2014-02-26T01:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/?p=1002"},"modified":"2014-02-25T19:06:22","modified_gmt":"2014-02-26T01:06:22","slug":"tax-brackets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/tax-brackets\/","title":{"rendered":"Tax Brackets"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m with Atrio<\/a>s here (warning: profanity). The easiest part of computing your taxes is the calculation of tax from Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) facilitated by the tax tables. You could have one bracket, ten brackets, a hundred brackets, or an elliptic curve<\/a>; the lookup tables make that computation simple, and the fact that most people<\/a> use computers to e-file means that it takes a fraction of a second to compute even the most complex of tax brackets. Even my most favorite calculation in all of government, Minnesota\u2019s transportation sparsity<\/a> formula, is a cinch to calculate in no time:<\/p>\n

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No, the complexity of the tax code comes from all the random deductions and credits that exist. Those are the million questions that are asked of your when you use a computer program to fill out your taxes; those are questions 8 through 61 on your friendly 1040<\/a> form; those are the countless other forms you need to fill out to calculate your true AGI. That\u2019s the real time-sink, and if you eliminate all those adjustments, deductions, and credits, you will save real time and make the tax code much simpler.<\/p>\n

So why don\u2019t we get rid of all that extra stuff? Well, for one thing, most of those deductions are credits are very popular: the 401(k) exclusion, the mortgage interest deduction, student loan interest deduction, capital gains exclusion on the sale of homes, charitable contribution deduction, local tax deduction\u2026lots of people (including me<\/a>) take advantage of them. Plus, you have an asymmetry of incentives here: if a tax loophole that I can\u2019t take advantage of ultimately costs the vast majority of American\u2019s only $1 but enriches a select few to the tune of $1,000 a year, who is going to be more vocal in terms of deciding that deduction\u2019s fate?<\/p>\n

Of all the reasons to reduce the number of tax brackets in our tax code, simplification is not a legitimate one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m with Atrios here (warning: profanity). The easiest part of computing your taxes is the calculation of tax from Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) facilitated by the tax tables. You could have one bracket, ten brackets, a hundred brackets, or an elliptic curve; the lookup tables make that computation simple, and the fact that most people… Continue reading Tax Brackets<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[116],"class_list":["post-1002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-taxes","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t