A Way To Make Taxes Fun and Easy

By Allen Bacon, The Daily Bosco

This op-ed piece is going to be short and sweet. The reason why it is going to be short and sweet is because what I am about to propose is so simple... it's the type of simple where you slap yourself in the head and go "Man that's so simple, it's brilliant".

As many Americans, who love to pay our income taxes and want to give the government as much of our hard-earned money as we possbly can to help out on whatever projects they deem it necessary.... (Note: the proceding sentence was for the benefit of any of our hardworking IRS officials who may be reading this.) I love to prepare my own taxes. Let me explain...it's an ego thing with me. When I prepare my own taxes, not only do I have the illusion that I saved some money by not sending it to a tax professional, I also feel that my Business Degree didn't totally go to waste. I have a Business Degree...I should be able to do my own taxes, right? Right? (Insert Crickets Chirping here)

So, every year, as I am working diligently on preparing my taxes, there is a point kind of like the 23rd mile of a marathon, where I hit the wall. That's when I start thinking of ways to simplify this whole tax process. There has to be a simpler and dare I say, a more fun way of collecting money to generate revenue for our government.

So here's my modest proposal....two words...National Lottery.

This came to me as I was taking a break from doing my taxes this year by going to the local 7-11 to get some coffee, a Harvest Bar, and..... some Lottery tickets.

No more tax forms or looking all over for your receipts to squeeze every last deduction that you can legally do. No more hours of working on your taxes....Simply go to the closest participating retail outlet and purchase a lottery ticket where not only are you helping fund our goverment...you have a chance of being a millionaire.

Ok, we don't jump in right away....I have a three year plan to get the plan rolling. The first year the National Lottery is introduced, we see how it goes without disrupting the current tax system. The second year we reduce the tax burden by the amount of money generated that actually goes toward the government. By year three we know if it's working or not...and if it is...then we completely get rid of the current tax system.

In case we don't generate the amount of funds needed, we can always go back to the current system. But don't you think that we wouldn't want to go back to the old way and contribute as much as we can to the lottery?

What happens to all the hard-working and helpful people that help us with preparing our taxes and all the related industries? What's going to happen to them? We are going to need people to manage the new lottery...so the good people at the IRS will help with that. The tax preparers and accountants will become fulltime financial advisors...we are going to need people to help us manage our new wealth properly. The people that sell the Turbo Tax software and similar software will now have new products to help us manage our wealth and maybe software to give us tips on what numbers to play, etc.

With the influx of new millionaires think of how this is going to stimulate the economy. Think about some of the great people who would actually be excellent leaders in our government but our reluctant to serve because of the lack of money they would receive. As the list of millionaires increases, there will be more people available for this. There is a long list of benefits from this simple plan but the best benefit is that it would take something so unnecessary and stressful and make it fun and easy.

Am I missing something? Can somebody talk some sense into me? I'm interested to hear your views. Respond to this entry and let's hear your proposals on how to simplify the tax process.