Chase Simplicity

“Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society” - Oliver Wendell Holmes

For better or worse, I started reading Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich-and Cheat Everybody Else by David Cay Johnston, a pulitzer prize-winning reporter. Being tax illiterate, I thought reading this book would serve two useful purposes: (1) I would learn some of the policy rationales behind tax laws, and (2) I would learn how favorable the tax system is for the rich. Both purposes, thus far, have been fully satisfied. From executive compensation to the estate tax (or, as some conservative pundits would say, “the death tax”), Johnston does a good job of making tax policies and tax law accessible to laymen, like me. Johnston also does a good job of explaining how the top 1% of America, in terms of wealth, have rigged the tax system—through an army of lobbyists, high-minded lawyers, think tanks, organizations, and political affiliations—such that America’s tax burden is no longer distributed on a progressive basis, rather, the burden falls, believe it or not, heavier on lower and middle class families.

Until I started reading this book, I never really appreciated how objectionable it is for a corporation or a corporate executive to legally evade taxes. I can’t fully articulate why this is the case,  but it is primarily rooted in a ever-growing gap in wealth distribution, and the multiple degrees of injustice that is connected with this process.

More to come..