While the USA's tax filing day (April 17) was nearly a month ago the following statistics are disturbing enough that they are worth reading through anytime during the year (Source: Wall Street Journal, April 15-16, 2006):
- Tax receipts -- for all levels of government as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product include -- Sweden 50.6%, France 43.4%, UK 35.6%, Germany 35.5%, USA 25.6%, Japan 25.3%, and Mexico 19.1%
- Tax Audits -- the Internal Revenue Service focused most of its tax audit resources in 2004 on two income tax brackets; $100k to $200k (at 1.41% of all returns being audited) and less than $25,000 (at 1.48%). I think we can safely conclude that if you are among the poorest of America's poor the IRS is watching you very closely -- for what I have no idea, perhaps fearing you will work your way out of poverty!!!???
- Tax preparers -- the USA has 1.2 million professional tax preparers but only 836,000 doctors. Now this is completely wrong since I clearly need a doctor after I process my paperwork for sending on to my tax preparer.
- Returns to States -- New Mexico does the best at capturing US federal tax dollars since it gets $2 in federal spending for every dollar paid by New Mexico's residents while New Jersey is dead last since it receives only 55 cents for every $1 in federal taxes paid by its residents. So has this wealth redistribution made New Mexico a wealthy state today? No, it remains one of nation's poorest states.
Dr. Steve Forbes please report to surgery,
Todd
2 comments:
Does that 1.2 million only include full time tax preparers or does it include the seasonal ones like a few of the farmers back home who also do tax prep to supplement their income?
According to the WSJ that 1.2 million includes full-time and season tax preparers.
It did not define "doctors" in the article but personally I would like to about 500,000 tax preparers use their talents to become paramedics instead of servants for the IRS -- rural America needs more parademics not tax compliance people.
space beagle
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