Looking Out for Your Welfare, Ha, Ha

Here's an interesting take on the GOPs drive for tax reform, in the language of their own justification for eliminating some popular personal deductions:

"Keeping records of these expenses is often very burdensome for taxpayers, and this current-law deduction also poses administrative and enforcement challenges for the IRS."*

I'm pleased that the GOP is so concerned about the record-keeping burdens of taxpayers that they're helping us out by eliminating the deductions many employees are currently able to claim, such as the out-of-pocket expenses teachers incur because their schools are chronically underfunded**. It will also be a joy for me to be able to stop documenting my ever-increasing and previously-deductible medical expenses.

But the GOP is not only interested in rescuing taxpayers from onerous task of documenting their deductions ... they also want to help the Internal Revenue Service deal with its "administrative and enforcement challenges." Of course, most of those challenges could result from the GOPs refusal adequately to fund and staff the IRS, but that's not important now ... nothing to see here, folks, just move along.

Oh, yes - and tax cuts for businesses are permanent, while those for individual taxpayers are only temporary.

And let's not forget the relentless GOP drive to kill the Affordable Care Act without any coherent and workable plan to replace it ... despite eight years of bitching, complaining, and staging scores of useless, theatrical, time-wasting votes to kill it.

Thanks, GOP, for looking out for the little guy ... you're the best!

Have a good day. The ones to come will be increasingly taxing. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

*  The quote is at the bottom of page 19 of the Section-by-Section Summary of the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" (H.R. 1), published by the House Ways and Means Committee. You can read the whole thing here. 

** In large part because of anti-tax positions of local Republican parties.