Tax Day

Floor Speech

TAX DAY -- (Senate - April 15, 2008)

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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, 20 years ago today, Senator Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming came to the Senate floor to speak about the tax burden Americans face. He came to the floor because it was April 15, tax day. He came to extend his sympathies to the many, as he called it, ``frustrated taxpayers who were probably at this minute,'' he said, ``sweating bullets over a form 1040 while gnawing through yet another pencil.''

He spoke 2 years after Congress enacted the landmark 1986 tax reform bill, legislation intended to reform and simplify the Code and make the chaos of past April 15s mere memories. That legislation did not reform the Tax Code, and it fell far short of tax simplification.

Senator Wallop voted against final passage, and he knew that history would be on his side.

The same day, he introduced into the Congressional Record a 1988 guest editorial from the Casper Star Tribune, a newspaper in Wyoming. The editorial reflected the sentiments similar to those expressed by Senator Wallop. Less than 2 years after enactment of that 1986 law, tax reform and simplification spawned 2,704 changes in the Internal Revenue Code, 42 new regulations, 65 announcements, 32 revenue rulings, and 48 new tax forms.

The changes were so complicated that in a nationwide study of 50 tax preparers who were given hypothetical identical pieces of information about what a family would do in trying to figure out their taxes, none of the 50 tax preparers came out with the same result in terms of how much that family would owe. The system was that complicated.

Senator Wallop said that guest editorial summed up the feelings of taxpayers across the Nation. The author of that guest editorial submitted 20 years ago today into the Congressional Record was a Wyoming physician named John Barrasso. That is right, the current occupant of Senator Wallop's Wyoming Senate seat.

The reform envisioned by Congress failed miserably to achieve its desired result. Today, Americans continue the painful experience of frantically attempting to complete their tax returns and write their checks to the Government before the clock strikes midnight.

The Tax Code is even longer today, 6,000 pages and over 2.8 million words, and it is growing. Provisions within the Code regularly expire, and then they are extended on an irregular basis. The IRS estimates that the average amount of time an American taxpayer is going to take to fill out their tax returns in this year is over 30 hours. More than 6 in 10 Americans hire someone to help prepare their returns for them. Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent annually trying to comply with our complicated tax laws.

Many post offices across America will be staying open until midnight tonight. Why? To give taxpayers one last shot to meet the deadline.

It is no wonder that more than 10 million Americans will request an extension this year. The future does not look much better for American taxpayers, both in terms of tax simplification and in terms of tax relief.

Americans work day in and day out to pay for Washington programs that they would not wish on their worst enemy. In too many families, one parent works to put food on the table and the other parent works to pay for the Washington bureaucracy.

The Government is too big. It spends too much. Americans get it. Americans have to balance their own budgets. They have to balance their own checkbooks. The Government should do the same. And the Government should do it the same way that American families do it--by controlling spending.

The current tax system is a mess, it is too complicated, it is antigrowth, and it discourages additional investment in America. The American taxpayer rightfully deserves a system that is simple. The American taxpayer deserves a system that provides certainty. The American taxpayer deserves a system that encourages success and innovation, and the American taxpayer deserves a system that is based on what is in their best interests and not the best interests of Government.

Have you ever wondered why tax day is April 15 and not, say, 6 months later, October 15? Imagine, if you will, if tax day were right before election day. Then the voices of the taxpayers would register loudly and clearly. Maybe this is the solution necessary to ensure that people, not the Government, come first because, after all, the money belongs to the people, the hard-working people of Wyoming and every other State in this country, not to the Government. It is the people's money; it is not the Government's money.

The American taxpayer deserves better, the American taxpayer deserves tax simplification, the American taxpayer deserves tax relief, and the American taxpayer deserves action.

Change the system? Well, it is not an easy undertaking but a necessary one. Four criteria are necessary to make the effective change. It must be fair so people pay their fair share. It must be simple so people can quickly file their own returns. It must be uniform. No matter who you are, the system must be applied equally to every taxpayer. And, No. 4, it must be consistent. Changing the system every year is not good for the economy and is not good for taxpayers.

During his floor speech on April 15, 1988, 20 years ago today, Wyoming Senator Malcolm Wallop said that his vote against the tax reform conference report, as he said, ``was one of the best things I have done since I have been in the Senate.'' He was right on target. His words have survived the test of time. Let us hope that 20 more years--20 more years--do not pass before we get it right.

I yield the floor.

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