Tax Day letter to editor from Mark C

Mark C wrote:

I had a "tax day" LTE in the Trib today (4/13/2007). I emailed it early Thursday morning and they printed it on Friday. It was based on some information in the 2006 1040 Instruction Forms. It's bizarre what you find in these stupid forms and what it actually means if you just think about it.

Mark

PS -- LP member Tom Gillooly here in Pittsburgh suggested a military comparison at the end and that seemed much better than what I had originally.

www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/letters/send/s_502433.html

Taxing stuff Friday, April 13, 2007

Consider two obscure claims in the 1040 instructions for filing the 2006 federal income tax:

** Almost 200 million taxpayers file a return ("Message from the Commissioner," Page 2).

** The 2006 estimated average total time burden to file for an individual is 24.2 hours ("Estimated Average Taxpayer Burden for Individuals by Activity," Page 81).

How many people working 2,000 hours per year would it take to file these 2006 tax returns? (Assume, for laughs, that each corporate and organizational filer in that 200 million needs only 24.2 hours, too.) About 2.42 million people.

Consider also that the number of 2006 active-duty U.S. military personnel was 1.38 million.

Unbelievably, it takes about 1 million more people just to file 2006 federal taxes than to serve as America's 2006 active duty defenders.

Conscription and insanity are alive and well, thanks to Congress and its IRS.

Mark Crowley, Plum