White House Gets an Earful on Tax Simplification

There were ideas a-aplenty when the Obama administration invited an influential group to offer up their thoughts on tax reform.

The tax subgroup of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board held its first public meeting on Wednesday after hearing complaints about closed-door meetings. Most of the participants, who included representatives from the National Federation of Independent Business and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as well as Detroit accountant Marshall Hunt, had ideas about how to excise excessive taxes and tax rules. One of Hunt’s ideas was to simplify the nanny tax and education-related tax breaks, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Other suggestions included consolidating the number of savings programs such as 401(k) plans, IRAs, Simple IRAs, health savings accounts, and medical savings accounts into just a few, and simplifying the home-office deduction and depreciation allowances.

In case you missed the meeting, there’s a replay available on the White House’s Web site at http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Streaming-at-1230-PERAB-Meeting-on-Tax-Reform/. Unfortunately it starts in mid-conversation, leaving one wondering if some latter-day Rose Mary Woods did the taping.

If you have your own ideas about reforming the Tax Code, you can drop a line to perab@do.treas.gov. Those who prefer paper are asked to confine their thoughts to five single-spaced pages of text. The tax reform subcommittee also asks that people not recommend a whole new tax system, meaning that no matter what, we’re still basically stuck with the present one.