Dan Coats: “The Senator from Oregon is exactly right. I took three tax courses in law school. I cannot do my taxes with any…”

“The Senator from Oregon is exactly right. I took three tax courses in law school. I cannot do my taxes with any assurance that I am doing it right because this code has become so incredibly complicated. The alternative minimum tax adds an additional set of calculations that make it even more complicated. Today, 80 percent of the tax filers have to get help to file their taxes, 20 percent of those buy software and hook it into their computer and try to work through it that way, and 60 percent take it to a professional. If you are not working as a professional in a career as a CPA or a tax return specialist, you cannot keep up with the 70,000 pages and 10,000-plus exemptions and the complexity of filing a return. It should not in any sense of the matter be a tax collection system that requires 80 percent of our taxpayers to have to seek professional help at a significant cost. As I think I indicated earlier, $6 billion a year is spent on transferring money from the person paying the taxes to someone just to prepare their returns. Small businesses face a similar problem. Small businesses do not have the big back room with the hired accountants and others to handle all the paperwork. Small business men and women have to be out front selling the product and have to be talking to the customer.…”