Other Columns by Paul M. Weyrich
Paul M. Weyrich Bio

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I have been blessed with a good wife who is a wonderful mother and a superb grandmother. It is hard to complain about her after nearly 42 years of marriage. I know I have been blessed far more than I deserve. The only substantive problem Joyce has presented is this: she insists on doing our taxes. Her point is that average Americans should be familiar with the tax code and how to apply it. She says that if every taxpayer prepared his own tax return we would have real reform immediately.

In all these years we never have asked for an extension. Even when we know we might get a substantial refund, the tax return almost always is filed upon the last day. Taxes so intimidate Joyce that she doesn't want to do them until she absolutely must. From the first return she prepared in 1963 we had something unusual. I had outside income from free-lance reporting in addition to income from fulltime employment. It has been like that for all these years.

When we later acquired some stocks and bonds the reporting got even more complex. This year I have never seen Joyce so frustrated as over an annuity that my beloved uncle Ralph Wickstrom left us after he passed away unexpectedly last summer. Among other complications, there are two different ways that an annuity could be calculated for tax purposes. Joyce did the calculations both ways, which required some calls to IRS for clarification.

Joyce is a woman who ordinarily looks far younger than her actual age but not when she is doing the taxes. I swear she looks a decade older than she is when she finishes.

There is no reason that it should take a whole book to calculate our taxes. Our taxes are not nearly as complex as are those of other folks we know. Other than our home we own no property. In talking with my contemporaries I understand investment property ownership can get terribly complex.

I mention this because President Bush wants to change the tax code. A solid majority of Americans believes the tax code is unfair and wants it changed.

Yet at the same time Americans think that the tax code is unfair, only 40% support a flat tax. The nearly 60% who don't think the tax code is unfair are adamantly opposed to a flat tax. Why? With a flat tax deductions for mortgage interest and charitable contributions would be eliminated. Americans cherish those two deductions more than the child care credit or the deductions for family members or other beneficial tax breaks. Some politicians have proposed a modified flat tax, keeping both the mortgage interest and charitable contribution deductions. The problem would be that the so-called flat tax which were no longer completely flat, would need to include an unreasonably high tax rate to compensate deductions.

The remaining opposition comes from those who believe that with a flat tax the rich would not pay their fair share. I don't know what a fair share is to upper income people. I do know this. The top 5% of current taxpayers pays almost 75% of all federal income taxes. The public thinks that is fair because for years liberals have pounded away that it is disgraceful to be a wealthy American. If you have money even if you earned it through an invention or by management of a large corporation then somehow you are evil. No matter how much you pay in taxes it is never enough.

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