Saturday, September 4, 2004

Jim Maule (Villanova) notes the internal inconsistency in the tax portion of President Bush’s speech to the Republican National Convention:

The President seems to have made two points about taxes:

1. The tax system, along with other government programs, was “created for the world of yesterday, not tomorrow.” It is a “drag on our economy” and is a “complicated mess filled with special interest loopholes.” It saddles “people with more than six billion hours of paperwork and headache every year.” So he has concluded that a “simpler, fairer, pro-growth” tax system is in order and he intends to “lead a bipartisan effort to reform and simplify the federal tax code.”

2. If the President has his way, the tax code will be used to provide tax relief to attract businesses to American opportunity zones. He would “offer a tax credit to encourage small businesses and their employees to set up health savings accounts.”

So, which is it? The tax code is complicated and needs to be simplified? Or the tax code should be made more complex by adding at least two more special provisions?

For Jim’s full discussion (“Complex Simplicity and Simple Complexity”), see here.