The editorial, "Should A-M-T Be G-O-N-E? (Accounting Today, Aug. 22-Sept. 4, 2005, page 6) was superb. Not only must the alternative minimum tax go, but it should be accompanied out the door by the Internal Revenue Code, as well, and be replaced by a combined federal and state national sales tax.Consider the advantages:
1. Nobody escapes the tax.
2. Simplicity of application.
3. Elimination of all other taxes with all of the bureaucratic controls.
4. Reduction of red tape and paperwork.
5. Providing a choice for the people to pay or not to pay the NST.
6. Prohibiting the government from intervening in the natural economic forces of the market through the manipulation of income taxes.
There must surely be other advantages that outweigh and overwhelm the present potpourri and costly systems of federal, state, county, city and municipal taxes and ordinances.
With the NST, Public Company Accounting Oversight Board Chairman William McDonough need not be concerned about introducing tough rules for tax services. Instead, he could and should be addressing Congress with the adoption of national accounting laws that would replace the present ludicrous accounting standards.
Sometimes I wonder, why is it that 400,000 CPAs, including myself, cannot fathom this and petition Congress to do away with generally accepted auditing standards and accounting principles, and the bureaucracies attached to them?
Can you imagine that the American Institute of CPAs is now ready to issue more auditing standards, one of which is to establish the accountant's responsibility to inform management of any fraud?
For your information, Mr. Chuck Landes [AICPA director of audit and attest standards], I, along with my past employers, have been doing this since time immemorial. When will we return to the old rational system of reporting unaudited and audited reports, instead of the stupid compilations and reviews that are meaningless?
Not only are compilations unreliable, but they are dangerous from the point of view of litigation. With the accounting laws in place, we accountants can then be assured of legal protection against the rapacious and greedy attorneys for the plaintiffs.
Anatole Hramtsov, CPA
Glendale, Calif.
