Tax code should reward, not punish
April 14, 2013
By U.S. Congressman Raul Labrador

As Tax Day approaches, imagine you had the opportunity to invent a new tax code for the United States. You would be hard pressed to come up with something more confusing, cumbersome and less job-friendly than we have now.

Even the previous head of the Internal Revenue Service admitted to using a tax preparer to help file due to our tax code's complexity.

To put the colossus of our tax code into perspective, consider this: at more than 3.8 million words, our tax code has more than four times more words than the complete works of William Shakespeare. It has swelled from 400 pages in 1913 to over 70,000 pages today.

According to the Tax Foundation, Tax Freedom Day will fall on April 18. That means Americans, on average, will work more than three and a half months before they have earned enough money to pay this year's tax obligations at the local, state and federal levels.

This year, the federal government expects to extract a whopping $2.7 trillion -- the highest revenue in our history -- in taxes from Americans. Yet President Obama continues to call for even higher taxes and includes $1.1 trillion in new taxes in his budget proposal.

Tax Day serves as a reminder that taxpayers don't need to pay more in taxes. Our economy is still fragile and many areas in Idaho are suffering economically.

That is why I have been a strong advocate for pro-growth tax reform, such as the reforms advanced by Rep. Paul Ryan in the FY2014 budget. Those reforms would discard our needlessly complex tax code and replace it with a simpler and fairer code that promotes saving and investment and will create jobs.

Our tax code should be easier to understand and comply with. Taxpayers spend approximately 6.1 billion hours and $168 billion complying with the tax code. The amount of money families and businesses spend trying to comprehend the tax code is money that could be spent better elsewhere. For example, businesses could develop new products and invest in their future. The more energy spent searching for special deductions, credits and loopholes, the less productive we are as a country.

It's time we had a tax code that rewards – not punishes – hard work and success. A simpler and fairer tax code is a better platform for more jobs and a more robust economy.