With April 15 rapidly approaching, it is time to start thinking taxes once again. Yet do people actually stop to think about what the US tax system really is? And, as shown yesterday, does it even matter any more? After all as was just demonstrated based on cold, hard numbers, the US government has in fiscal 2012 funded deficit spending with 15% more debt (which will sooner or later be monetized by the Fed, as China just sold $100 billion TSYs in December in a harbinger of things to come) than with net tax revenues: should it not just drop the pretense of taxes altogether and fund the entire deficit with debt? After all it is not like it will slow down debt issuance any time in the next 4 years (when it will have $24.1 trillion in debt). For a 90 minute review of all that we take for granted as we sit down with our tax accountants, or with that copy of TurboTax (and in the case of Tim Geithner, push F1 repeatedly), various economists, politicians and industrialists weigh in on the U.S. income tax system in this hour and a half documentary showing how the tax code has grown and changed in response to military conflicts, economic changes and an ever-evolving political climate.
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