The U.S. Income Tax: What It Is, How It Got That Way, and Where We Go from Here

by Graetz, Michael J.

• ISBN13: 9780393320022
• ISBN10: 0393320022
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-09-01
• Publisher: NORTON W.W. & CO INC

Summary

How to make sense of the American tax mess (and the cures that are supposed to fix it), with a new afterword for the paperback edition (originally titled The Decline (and Fall?) of the Income Tax). Dissatisfaction with the income tax has grown so high that attacks on it, and proposals to reform (or even abolish) it, now amount to an almost constant dull roar. How has it happened that ordinary Americans have come to regard the federal income tax as unfair and tax protesters as heroes? Trenchant and timely, this book locates the answers in both the substance of the Internal Revenue Code and the political process that created and feeds this monstrous law. Michael J. Graetz shows plainly how the income tax has become a political football; how government has allowed its complexities to grow with no thought of their impact on taxpayers; and, most of all, how PAC funds and special interests have affected Congress's will to reform the system. Graetz also looks closely at the various flat-tax and consumption-tax proposals and shows why they are not as fair or simple as their advocates claim. With colorful anecdotes to explain his argument, Graetz points the way to tax reforms that really are simple, sensible, and fair. The U.S. Income Tax is a book for everyone concerned with where our tax dollars go and what we get for them.

Author Biography

Michael J. Graetz is Justus S. Hotchkiss Professor of Law at Yale Law School and served in the Treasury Department during the Bush administration.

Table of Contents

Introduction	3	(26)
PART I. THE DECLINE
It's a Sin to Get a Mexican Divorce	29	(12)
Chasing Chinchilla Coats and Other Tax Shelter Aerobics	41	(11)
Disappearing Dollars	52	(16)
Dad Is Not at the Dining Room Table Anymore	68	(21)
Have We Become a Nation of Tax Cheaters?	89	(22)
PART II: THE SAUSAGE FACTORY
A Visit to the Sausage Factory	111	(12)
Rosie Scenario Becomes the Belle of the Ball	123	(17)
The Madness of Two Georges	140	(9)
Sin Looks Pretty Good When the Alternative Is Taxes	149	(11)
Read My Hips	160	(17)
Just the Facts, Ma'am	177	(18)
PART III: THE FALL?
Taxing What You Spend Instead of What You Make	195	(17)
The Flat Tax, the ``USA'' Tax, and Other Uncommon Consumption Taxes	212	(32)
Back to the Future	244	(33)
Seeking Protection from the Politicians	277	(16)
Afterword	293	(10)
Appendix: A Tax System for the 21st Century	303	(12)
Notes	315	(20)
Index	335