Tax Racket

By Bill Maher

Can we please stop with this fiction that dealing with the complexity in our tax code means reducing the number of tax brackets? Currently we have seven tax brackets. Jeb’s plan lowers it to three. See? He simplified the tax code. Except that there are thousands of pages in the US tax code and the tax brackets are pretty much the simplest part of it. They’re not hard to understand or implement. There’s nothing complicated about them at all. It’s the other thousands of pages of loopholes and credits and accounting measures and business provisions that only a CPA is going to understand. That’s the complexity in the tax code. 

So when you hear a Republican say he’s going to “simplify the tax code” all they’re saying is “I’m going to cut rich people’s taxes.” That’s it. Under the guise of simplifying something that doesn’t need simplifying, they’re going to cut the rates on top earners, which will end up amounting to way, way more in dollar terms than any other cut anyone else gets. They’re also not going to touch any of the provisions in the tax code that are actually complex, because rich people with lawyers and accountants are the ones who take advantage of those. 

If you don’t believe me, watch what every single Republican tax plan does this election season. Or ask them to name a single loophole they would cut. Trust me, this test will never fail to produce a plan that funnels money to the wealthiest Americas and doesn’t address the complexity in the tax code.