The Tax Racket: Government Extortion From A to Z - Softcover

Gross, Martin L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345387783 ISBN 13: 9780345387783

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1995

Synopsis

OUR GOVERNMENT IS PICKING OUR POCKETS--AND CALLING IT TAXATION!
In his previous bestsellers, The Government Racket and A Call for Revolution, Martin L. Gross alerted the nation to government waste, corruption, and the shocking squandering of public funds. But an even deeper and more pervasive problem is crippling America's economy and undermining our nation's strength: excessive and unfair taxes. Through spiraling federal, state, and local taxes, our government is literally robbing us blind right under our noses--and it's time we opened our eyes to the truth. In comprehensive chapters from A to Z (Audits to Zoning), The Tax Racket exposes exactly what's wrong with our present tax system, including:
Taxpayer Rights? You don't have many. The Constitution supposedly protects us against search and seizure of our papers and property, but the IRS couldn't care less.
Airline and Airport Taxes--these federal taxes on every plane flight are not only kept secret from you, but much of these billions that go into Washington's general slush fund are not even used for better air travel.
X-tortion Oddities--our governments levy taxes for all sorts of things you've never heard of--from "mall taxes" to "use taxes" to "snack taxes" to 66 "excise taxes"--but you pay them anyway.
Earned Income Tax Credit--this program, billed as an aid to the working poor, is actually the biggest fiscal assault ever launched on the beleaguered American middle class.
Social Security--the more the government hauls in your FICA taxes, the faster it spends that money on everything else, from welfare to farm subsidies to the President's salary. The result? Social Security will be bankrupt when the baby boomers retire.
But it doesn't have to be this way. The Tax Racket lays out a clear and workable plan to fix it--by abolishing all federal, state, and city income taxes and replacing them with a fair and equitable national sales tax that will reduce the tax burden on everyone. Nothing gets American citizens angrier than the excessive and overlapping taxes forced down their throats. This honest, eye-opening book is a call to arms to bust the tax racket before it breaks the backbone of our nation.
It's time to say goodbye to filing, penalties, interest, audits, and fear!
STOP TAKING OUR MONEY!

About this title

From the Inside Flap

NT IS PICKING OUR POCKETS--AND CALLING IT TAXATION!
In his previous bestsellers, The Government Racket and A Call for Revolution, Martin L. Gross alerted the nation to government waste, corruption, and the shocking squandering of public funds. But an even deeper and more pervasive problem is crippling America's economy and undermining our nation's strength: excessive and unfair taxes. Through spiraling federal, state, and local taxes, our government is literally robbing us blind right under our noses--and it's time we opened our eyes to the truth. In comprehensive chapters from A to Z (Audits to Zoning), The Tax Racket exposes exactly what's wrong with our present tax system, including:
Taxpayer Rights? You don't have many. The Constitution supposedly protects us against search and seizure of our papers and property, but the IRS couldn't care less.
Airline and Airport Taxes--these federal taxes on every plane flight are not only kept secret from you, but much of these billions that g

Reviews

Galled by April 15? Readers can temper their bilious moods with Gross' third broadside at out-of-control government. His previous two hit the best-seller lists (Government Racket, 1992, and Call for Revolution, 1993), and this shot at tax rate collection methods emulates its predecessors' anecdotal, alphabetical approach in its quest to collect. For each lettered tax, from airport passenger taxes to the famously dumb yacht tax of 1990 (it killed off boat construction and raised little revenue), Gross reports the travails of Jane Q. Citizen and rails against the avaricious ingenuity that subjects her every transaction to exaction. In some states, she needn't be transacting anything: something called the Intangible Personal Property Tax levies payments on idle assets like certificates of deposit. For this plague of payments, mounting past 40 percent of most people's income, Gross' antidotes are radically astringent: abolish the IRS, abolish county governments, abolish capital gains and inheritance taxes, and substitute a 13.5 percent national sales tax. Public libraries might not warm to a program that endangers their revenue stream, but patron demand trumps institutional self-interest. Gilbert Taylor

Edition details

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0345387783
• ISBN 13: 9780345387783
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 319