The Tax Racket: Government Extortion From A to Z
Galled by April 15? Readers can temper their bilious moods with Gross' third broadside at out-of-control government. His previous two hit the best-seller lists (Government Racket, 1992, andCall for Revolution, 1993), and this shot at tax rate collection methods emulates its predecessors' anecdotal, alphabetical approach in its quest to collect. For each lettered tax, from airport passenger taxes to the famously dumb yacht tax of 1990 (it killed off boat construction and raised little revenue), Gross reports the travails of Jane Q. Citizen and rails against the avaricious ingenuity that subjects her every transaction to exaction. In some states, she needn't be transacting anything: something called the Intangible Personal Property Tax levies payments on idle assets like certificates of deposit. For this plague of payments, mounting past 40 percent of most people's income, Gross' antidotes are radically astringent: abolish the IRS, abolish county governments, abolish capital gains and inheritance taxes, and substitute a 13.5 percent national sales tax. Public libraries might not warm to a program that endangers their revenue stream, but patron demand trumps institutional self-interest.Gilbert Taylor