The tax code is fucked. And entrenched interests have the deck stacked so hard and in so many devious ways about normal folks, that the only way out is a rant.
A couple who work in a supermarket (her), as a City Planner (him), and combined make upwards of $110,000 have four kids. They sell their house, which they have been paying off year by year for almost a decade. They don't itemize, so they don't get any credit for the mortgage interest deduction. And when they sell? Boom, of the sales price of $150,000-ish, take 12K off the top for rapacious closing costs, and overpriced title search and insurance...does anybody, ever...collect on a title insurance policy? No, it's bullshit, like so much of the rest of what's wrong with this country...companies institutionalize ripping people off, percent by percent. They position themselves where the money comes out, and divert the stream. So, sell the house, representing probably the most money this hardworking couple will make from an investment in their lives, and already 25% comes off the top and into the mortgage industrial complex. Drip, drip drip. Charge 'em $75 for a copy, $250 for a filing fee. Drip drip.
She has a baby...guess what, pays the deductible for her, $3K, pays the deductible for the baby, born premature, $5K...do they get a deduction for this expense, which represents more than 10% of their net income? Guess what, they do not. A banker making $63,000,000/yr isn't taxed on a penny of his cadillac medical insurance policy, which his employer gets to write off, but these folks? they're up the creek. Want an earned income tax credit? Be prepared to fill out 7 pages of attestations that you're not lying. Stock option grant on the other hand? Well, the company granting the option gets to use the modified Black Scholes option pricing method, which vastly undervalues the actual value of the option (otherwise they'd just use money), allowing it to minimize employee compensation expense.
This couple? Paying 7.03% interest on their student loans...no delinquencies, no late payments...oh, and student loans are the one debt you cant extinguish via bankruptcy.
Why is dollar #5,000,001 of Fred the hardworking dentist who got lucky in real estate taxed at the same rate as dollar #16,000,000,001 (yeah, that's $16 billion) of the Sam Walton fortune (actually, how much money Sam Walton died with makes the word "fortune" look pale)? Why is it so important to save the money of DEAD guys? DEAD rich guys? Who needs this money more, this guy I'm doing the tax return for, which four little kids to put through school, or a DEAD RICH GUY? Seriously, who needs that money? It's infuriating...infuriating
I could go on and freaking on. If you're a business, everything that you need to stay alive is an expense deducted against income...if you're a human being, everything you need to stay alive is just bait to get you more indebted, more entangled in the corporate web, buying more things you don't need...
To end, a couple of quotes from Matt Taibbi:
Wall Street has turned the economy into a giant asset-stripping scheme, one whose purpose is to suck the last bits of meat from the carcass of the middle class.
Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game.