The IRS is an unwieldy animal (I hesitate to say "brute"; YMMV) that will only get unwieldier as the tax code gets more and more bloated. The average IRS agent is, let's face it, not a genius, and even a genius would probably get lost in that code nowadays. I got married last year and was astounded that the joint tax return with my wife this year ran to 50 pages and cost me $1,500 in accounting fees to prepare.
I dream of the day when a simpler system like a national sales tax could replace the whole thing.
Sales tax penalizes those living hand to mouth more than is probably advisable. I don't mind progressive taxation, but I would love to see them stop trying to do social engineering with the tax code and just charge a fixed rate based on income, period.
sales tax is usually coupled with a reverse income tax (cash grant to the poor that decreases to 0 as your income increases) to offset exactly the problem you mention.
I got married last year, and my tax situation was moderately complicated (the two of us lived in and earned income in three different states, we had a baby and various student loan/tuition-related deductions), and our joint tax return involved $120 in TurboTax fees and about 2 hours on a website.
On the counter, there's nothing fair about stealing someone's property either. If a person works for 40 years, pays off their mortgage, and has little money in old age, the idea of the government stealing their property due to failure to pay property taxes is extraordinarily vicious. I assume you'd back an exclusion for the primary residence (one home per person, or at least an income requirement).
It's based on the reality that people tend to buy houses based on the monthly payments they can afford, and property tax influences that reality. The old person living in a house may be paying the same amount of money in property tax:
It puts a general price pressure on decreasing housing prices. I would also put a much higher property tax rate on long term unoccupied property to increase rental supply to further decrease property values. California with it's relatively low property tax schemes favoring older people pays for it in overpriced property prices.
> I assume you'd back an exclusion for the primary residence (one home per person, or at least an income requirement).
No need for that. If the only taxes were on real estate, that would free up a vast amount of capital that the elderly are currently paying in taxes on their IRA withdrawals. Even if their current property taxes were tripled, they'd likely end up with a net gain (or at least no net loss) due to the eliminated income taxes.
I dream of the day when a simpler system like a national sales tax could replace the whole thing.