I spent a major part of the day yesterday doing taxes. The whole tax system is a needless mess. If you want to read my rant on this you will have to go to the dark side and read my other blog ( http://idignatioin.blogspot.com/ ). One theory of taxes is that they encourage or discourage certain behavior. The government imposes a tax on drinking or smoking, and we pay more to sin. It is a wonderful system that makes it so only the well-to-do can sin. Fortunately, most sins are still free. Gambling strikes me as the perfect tax system. Gambling taxes a commodity in abundant supply. The commodity is stupidity. Few could dispute that when you systematically give your money away, which you do when you gamble, you are not exhibiting a whole lot of intelligence. The more you gamble, the higher stupidity tax you pay.
If our government wanted to stop tax cheating, and actually increase revenue, it could be done in a simple fashion. If the taxpayer was given one lottery ticket for every hundred dollars of tax the person paid, people would pay more taxes just to get the tickets. Tax time would become fun as everyone waited to see who won the tax lottery.
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