Here some ways you could simplify the tax code which everyone claims to want to do but now one really does.
1. have income be income, not passive income, not investment income, not materially participating real estate professionals, not qualifying and unqualifying dividens, not short term capital gain, not long term capital gain, not capital gain on collectables, not ordianry, not self employment (I know this one deals with other taxes but nevermind that), Just make income income. I know they wont do this and i am not sure I would even go so far as to say there is only one kind of income. I would keep Capital gain treated different, but all the others are just silly.
For example lets say you have a rental property and it loses 1000k. It is a 1000k passive loss which is not deductibel. Unless you have other passive income to off set or you ended the rental activity, or you make under a certain amount that it is deductible, but it isn't ordinary, it is still passive, meaning you don't pay se tax on it.
Unless your business is rentals, than it is. See what i mean and this is just one example. People wonder about our tax code. It is stupid.
2. Don't make Mortgage interest deductible. Lets say me and you both make 250k a year like joe the plumber (i know), but I buy a 1 million dollar home and you buy a 300k home (and we both finace them at 8%). Does it make a lick of sense that you pay around 16k more in tax than i do?
That is really all i can think of right now.
Joe the plumber story is all the rage these days because obama told someone that was lying to him, that he wanted to spread the wealth, which has conservative in an uproar. It seems to me that Obama should have a commercial talking about how under the Bush doctrine for the first time since the end of the second world war. The top 1% increased their income while the bottom 40% of wage earners earned less. Bush's policies have done exactly not spread the wealth, and have force millions below the poverty line. That has to stop.
America can not be America without a middle class. Bush's policies have take our greatest asset as a country and diminshed our wealth. while Buffet and Gates have gotten richer, not just in actual numbers, but in percentages.
I don't even know if half of that is true but it makes a great commercial, and McCain's robo calls are misleading, Obamas should be too.
I mean McCain calls and says, Obama worked with a domestic terrorist.
Obama should call and say, McCain is an adulter who wants to admit drug addicts that steal medicine for the poor into the white house.
Oh wait, that right everything about that last sentence is true.
:-)