Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation
For Immediate Release
Monday, April 12, 2010
202-285-0244
www.freedomandprosperity.org
New CF&P “Economics 101” Video
Exposes Hidden Tax of IRS Compliance
(Washington, D.C., Monday, April 12, 2010) In the latest “Economics 101” video released today by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation (CF&P), Hiwa Alaghebandian of the College of William and Mary explains that the high cost of complying with the internal revenue code is a hidden tax that makes a bad system even more oppressive. Entitled The Onerous Compliance Cost of the Internal Revenue Code, the mini-documentary examines how corrupt loopholes and rising paperwork force taxpayers to devote ever larger amounts of time, energy, resources, and money in hopes of figuring out the right number to put on their tax returns.
Links to the video: YouTube | Yahoo | Capitol Hub
“The tax code is not only too complicated and arcane but also extremely ambiguous,” said CF&P President Andrew Quinlan. “The average taxpayer is saddled with the burden of trying to figure out complex questions and often has very little hope of figuring out the right answer.”
“The current system is anti-growth because of punitive tax rates, but that’s just the economic cost,” added Dan Mitchell, Cato Institute Senior Fellow and Chairman of CF&P. “Billions of hours and hundreds of billions of dollars are wasted each year on compliance.”
Executive Summary:
- The tax system is a complicated nightmare that forces taxpayers to devote ever-larger amounts of time, money, energy, and other resources in hopes of complying with the internal revenue code and avoiding IRS persecution. This CF&P Foundation video shows that this corrupt mess is the result of 97 years of social engineering and industrial policy that began almost immediately after that dark day in 1913 that the income tax was created.
This new video is part of CF&P’s Economics 101 video series, which is designed to explain free market concepts, with particular emphasis on reaching students and young people. This is the fourth video in the Economics 101 series. See below for links to all videos.
Links to other Economics 101 Videos:
- Don’t Copy Europe’s Mistakes: Less Government Is the Right Way to Fix Healthcare
http://www.freedomandprosperity.org/videos/euro-miistakes/euro-miistakes.sht ml - Moral Hazard
http://www.freedomandprosperity.org/econ101/moralhazard/moralhazard.shtml - Government Monopolies
http://www.freedomandprosperity.org/econ101/monopolies/monopolies.shtml - Learning From Sweden’s Free Market Renaissance
http://www.freedomandprosperity.org/econ101/econ101.shtml#sweden
CF&P Foundation has also released more than two-dozen mini-documentaries since 2007. These videos include Tax Competition Primer, VAT-Hidden Tax, Global Flat Tax Revolution, Cutting the U.S. Corporate Income Tax, Promoting Prosperity, Obama’s So-Called Stimulus, Obama’s Deferral Proposal, Case Against Class-Warfare Tax Policy, President Obama’s Dishonest Demagoguery on Tax Havens, a three part series on the Benefits of Tax Havens and a another three-part series on the Laffer Curve.
Link: http://www.freedomandprosperity.org/videos/videos.shtml
Web Links
Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX8EswfGKQw
Yahoo
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/7314529/19094409
Capitol Hub
http://capitolhub.com/video/9252/onerous-compliance-cost-internal-revenue-code
For additional comments:
Andrew Quinlan can be reached at 202-285-0244, andy@freedomandprosperity.org
Dan Mitchell can be reached at 202-218-4615, dmitchell@cato.org
###
