Say Anything Blog

And he knows a thing or two about tax evasion.

President Barack Obama’s Treasury secretary says the administration will unveil a series of rules and measures in the coming months to limit the ability of international companies to avoid U.S. taxes.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday that Obama will propose legislation to limit U.S. companies’ ability to shelter foreign earnings from taxation in the U.S. He also said the administration will try to limit wealthy Americans’ ability to use tax havens to avoid taxation.

He did not immediately provide details.

Now, I don’t condone tax evasion.  The law is the law, and we abide by it even when we don’t necessarily agree with it because failing to do so would undermine our rule of law.  That being said, maybe instead of investing tax dollars we can ill afford into draconian new enforcement measures we should ask ourselves why so many people seek to avoid taxes and look at alleviating those.

I mean, nobody likes paying taxes no matter what level they’re at, but given how high and complicated our taxes are right now it’s not surprising that so many companies and individuals feel our tax code whether it be by exploiting loopholes or hiding income.  If we cut taxes down to more reasonable rates, and if we simplified the tax code, there would be less incentive to dodge taxes.

And before any liberals out there argue against this, consider that the only alternative explanation to outright fraud for what seems like half of the Obama administration having unpaid taxes is a tax code so complicated not even the political elite understand it well enough to comply with it all the time.