עמוד 19 גיליון מס' 6 מרס-אפריל 2000       אינטר-עט של דלא-ניידי ומיסוי מקרקעין      Born free. Taxed to death Collected by Henryk Rostowicz It seems there is something fundamentally wrong when so many experts are so profitably employed at protecting our sovereign citizens from our civil servants. The only thing that you can be sure about the weather or the tax laws is that they will change. Most of the major religions of the world that ask their members to tithe only ask for 10% of their member's income. If God only needs 10%, why does the government need 50%? Politicians are philanthropists who want to give your money to other people. The only effective way to eliminate tax loopholes is to eliminate politicians. Those with the least votes will pay the most taxes. During the past few years, the Knesset has discovered a form of "perpetual motion". They call it “tax reform”. Every time the Knesset passes a new bill to simplify the the tax laws, I get a big increase in my consulting business. A lot of politicians say they want a simple tax law. But the problem with a simple law is that it's democratic. It hurts everyone - including the politicians. The good news for taxpayers is that the smartest tax experts don't work for the IRS. They were smart enough to realize that taxpayers will pay more to keep their money than the government will pay to collect it. A tax expert is someone who learns more and more about less and less until they eventually learn everything there is to know about .... nothing. A tax generalist is someone who learns less and less about more and more until they eventually know absolutely nothing about everything. Then they become financial planners. When Knesset writes the tax laws, they often leave it to the IRS to “fill in the details’ with specific instructions. That's like asking a hungry lion to protect the sheep from the wolves. Only a fool will cheat on his taxes when there are so many legal loopholes available. A long time ago, I discovered that I couldn't make a living as stand up comic, so I went to the opposite extreme and became a tax expert.