One 1980 Dollar to the College Republicans
(By Check)
Volume 12, Number 23
Issue 571
Not too long ago, I was looking though my strongbox of college mementos and found a cancelled check made out in January 1980 for $1.00 to “University of Richmond College Republicans.” Why do I still have this? Well, my answer would be, “How do you know where you are going if you do not remember where you have been?”
All of us are the sum total of our education and our historical personal and professional experiences. The $1.00 was to pay my membership dues for the semester. I learned a lot from those College Republican meetings that semester. I learned that government should be about people--not special interests--and that our President needs to be a bold innovator and not merely someone who will maintain the status quo. I took that ideal to Roanoke this past weekend to see what would happen with it.
A little over twenty-four years after I wrote that $1.00 check, I learned of Ronald Reagan’s death while attending the Virginia State Democratic Convention in Roanoke as one of only two elected Chesterfield officials attending as a delegate (Congressman Bobby Scott being the other). One of the reasons that I was there was because of President Reagan and that $1.00 check.
I often speak and write about there being a “place” and “time” for everything. The place and time, specifically, for learning of Reagan’s death was just after Cynthia and I had a wonderful discussion with the likely Democratic nominee for Virginia’s Attorney General’s race in 2005, State Senator John Edwards, about the fact that Virginia’s legislature has passed legislation that can impair persons of the same sex to make contracts between each other, even in violation of the U. S. Constitution (see the Washington Post’s May 9, 2004 editorial at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11267-2004May8.html for more information).
Since CPAs are often asked to advise on tax strategies and these often involve contractual agreements (Buy-Sell Agreements, Partnership Agreements, Pension Plans, Beneficiary Designations, etc.), this issue is important to me and I’m shocked at what Virginia’s legislature did, so I went straight to the guy (Edwards) that led the floor fight against House Bill 2004-751’s passage.
It certainly was serendipitous that a former College Republican--now an elected official (as a Democrat)--had learned of the passing of one of his idols (a very republican Republican) while discussing Democratic politics, but I cut my political teeth on Ronald Reagan and learned to go against the status quo while at the same time learning that politics should be more about people than about power. This was what Ronald Reagan emulated to me. I love Ronald Reagan and have never kept that a secret.
Being a student at the University of Richmond from 1980-1984 (mirroring his first term), he was the primary topic of conversation--at that place and at that time. After graduation, his Tax Reform act of 1986 was the original standard that I “learned taxes” on. My personal historical “tax theory” knowledge always finds its way back to that Act--still probably the most drastic restatement of our tax system since it was put in place in 1913. Reagan had advocated dramatic lowering of tax brackets and the wholesale loss of many deductions. It was, at the time, a dramatic simplification of the rate and deduction structures.
In 1986, tax preparation got relatively simple again as top individual rates went from 50% down to 28% with only two brackets (now there are six brackets with a top rate of 35%). Since they (taxes) had become simpler, I revisited my desire to prepare taxes as a primary specialty and decided to do so, my decision being based primarily on the fact that they had become far less complex than I had found in college.
Well, eighteen years later, the Federal Income Tax Code is back to where it was in the pre-Reagan days--too may brackets and too many special interest deductions that apply to the few and not the many. In the days since Ronald Reagan, our Tax Code has become far too complex and difficult to understand and, essentially, the rates have gone back up without having the deductions.
Where Reagan’s Tax Reform Act of 1986 drastically lowered the brackets while getting rid of deductions for ordinary people, the eighteen years since have seen the rates go higher without letting the deductions back in. At present, our system of taxation has gone to the opposite of what Ronald Reagan wanted.
Our political system at all levels is besieged by special interest groups that have a stranglehold on Americans though their grip on Congress, especially when it comes to taxes. As tax bills--often written by special interest groups and lobbyists or, at a minimum, usually prompted by them--wind their way through Congress, there is never sweeping and drastic simplification, only little provisions added here and there. Since our government operates on deficit financing though an ever-increasing national debt, future generations will pay for these deductions.
Instead of having drastic simplification of our tax structure, as Reagan may have originally wished, we are, as a country, burdened with a system that is inherently unfair to 98% of Americans because of its complexity and the fact that it is based on the desires of special interest groups.
All our lawmakers seem to do is talk about recommending new tax benefits for one particular “group of the day” or one type of tax filer. When will we have candidates who will seriously advocate the dramatic simplification of our tax laws to the point where average Americans can prepare their own returns? When will our political system have a fair tax that is easy to understand that could be based on one set, fixed rate that would take a Constitutional amendment to change. Put a generous standard deduction in place to make sure that low income earners don’t pay any tax and then fix the rate forever and force the government to live within its means though a balanced budget!
When will Americans organize to elect officials who will drastically simplify our tax system and get us back to what President Ronald Reagan tried to start?
David B. Robinson, CPA
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