Pet Idea #734

Tax season is coming around and per usual I'm waiting for W-2's from company X.  We'll do the same for Tülay and shuttle all the documents over to our accountant where we'll learn even more about out tax code.  Taxes have become so complex that nobody can reasonably expect to understand all the rules.  Here are some statistics that I was reading today:

• Americans spend 7.6 billion hours annually trying to figure out their federal taxes. Working eight-hour days, five days a week, 50 weeks a year, that's the equivalent of 3.8 million full-time workers.
• At the average hourly wage of $27.54, that tax-preparation time amounts to $193 billion, or 14 percent of aggregate income tax receipts.
• A staggering 60 percent of individual taxpayers are so bewildered by the tax code that they hire outside preparers. An additional 22 percent buy computer software.

Anyway, much of this I'm sure you thought about too so here's my pet idea.  Congressmen should be required to file their own taxes.  That's it.

Consider that taxes become exponentially complex when one's wealth grows and the fact that the median net worth of our average congressman is $746,000 and one would realize that they would miss a lot of loopholes doing their own taxes.  I think a few years being subjected to their own codes, Congress would find the motivation to simplify their lives. Today, even with a professional tax preparer, Americans overpay their taxes by some estimates as much as $250 billion.  Just think how many GM cars they could buy with that extra money.