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A Letter to Congress About Taxation
Date: April 8, 2005
From: Bob Uhlar
Hi Friends:
I have composed a letter designed to be sent to Congress. It is about our income tax system and is self-explanatory.
1. Read the letter. If you agree, please forward this email to everyone you know.
Send it to them by a) email, b) fax, or c) regular mail. Preferably all three.
For email, you can copy and paste the letter into the email form on their websites.
(3 pages; 1400 words)
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Dear {insert Senator/Representative name]
I am deeply concerned about the trends in our U.S. government's finances and tax enforcement. One of the problems we have is widespread income tax evasion or cheating. It is fueling our budget deficits and national debt.
Income tax evasion has become an epidemic in our country. Experts now say that income tax cheating is now costing us at least 300-billion-dollars per year-- and that is a low estimate. Some believe it is at least twice that.
We must shed the myth of us-vs.-them and realize that We are the US government. I recognize that we all must pay taxes to get government services and protection. All that I ask is that everybody pay their fair share.
During the last 25 years, congress has cut the marginal tax rate on the wealthy (earning more than $300,000 per year) from 70 percent down to 35 percent. The capital gains tax (the profits made off rents, royalties, dividends, stocks and bonds) has also been reduced to 15 percent.
Some of our wealthiest citizens and corporations claim that these lower percentages are still too much. But the reality is that most of them pay no income taxes at all. They hide their income or use tax shelters (both legal and illegal).
I urge you, or your staff, to familiarize yourself with the book Perfectly Legal by David Cay Johnston (ISBN 1-59184-019-8). In the book, Johnston details the many ways taxes are being evaded, shifting the burden to the middle class.
Johnston cited one wealthy citizen who cheated the government out of 333-million-dollars that he owed in taxes. If he doesn't pay those taxes, millions of middle-class workers have to pay more in their taxes to make up for it, especially with 50 percent of all Americans making less than $30,000 per year.
If you don't familiarize yourself with the book, please follow the lead of three members of congress who are already champions of integrity in our tax system: Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, Rep. Richard Neal of Massachussetts, and Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas.
I urge you to make tax enforcement a priority. I believe that our government needs to finally establish true fiscal integrity to our country's budget, obligations and debt payments.
I am asking you to display courage in rejecting the pleas for preferential treatment by wealthy campaign contributors and serve the greater good of our nation.
Lets fulfill the contract of our founding fathers to "form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for a common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."
Therefore I urge you, along with the congress, to take the following steps:
1. Find ways to get everyone to truthfully declare their actual earnings, whether by wages or capital gains. Recognize that our income tax system was formed when virtually everybody collected a verifiable paycheck of wages.
2. Include Capital Gains in any comprehensive tax reform. Flat-tax proposals have had one glaring omission -- the proposals exclude capital gains (the profits made off rents, royalties, dividends, stocks and bonds). Require the wealthy to pay their fair share of EARNINGS -- regardless of where that income comes from.
3. Adjust the "Alternative Minimum Tax" brackets for inflation. This tax was instituted in 1969 as a way to combat tax evasion by wealthy Americans. Yet, the brackets have not been adjusted for 36 years of inflation -- meaning that Americans earning between $50,000 and $500,000 are about to get socked with higher taxes while the wealthy continue to avoid taxes. Adjusted for inflation, this tax should apply only to those earning more than $2-million. The AMT nullifies many common deductions. Most tax preparation software automatically applies the AMT without letting you know.
4. Simplify the tax code. Start by eliminating favors for rich campaign contributors. Our greater good is more important.
Prohibit these favors from being slipped onto other bills without debate. Require all tax bills and amendments to go before public hearings with all the sponsors names attached and an open debate.
5. End all deferrals of income by the wealthy, except into accounts such as 401(k) but with modest limits. Or require taxes to be paid before any income is deferred. As George W. Bush said after the Enron scandal, "What is fair on the top floor must be fair on the shop floor." Its is time to enforce that statement.
6. Change the focus of IRS audits to the wealthy tax cheaters, instead of the current focus on middle-class or lower class cheating. Catching one wealthy person, partnership, or corporation that is cheating would be much more efficient than trying to recoup a few dollars not paid by a blue-collar worker.
7. Discourage the use of investment pools known as "Exchange Funds." These allow people to avoid paying capital gains taxes when they sell stocks.
8. Reestablish the estate tax. Reject the rhetoric of those who call it the "death tax." This is the one time that tax cheaters can be caught -- when the estate is totaled for the heirs. Everybody should pay his or her fair share in taxes.
9. Discourage American citizens from renouncing their citizenship to avoid paying taxes. Require wealthy Americans who embrace this ploy to get a "green card" or require them to spend 183 days of each year outside our country.
10. Discourage corporations from moving their headquarters overseas to avoid paying income taxes. Some companies are avoiding taxes by simply changing their official address to a post office box in a Caribbean country.
11. Discourage corporations from shifting intellectual property to overseas ownership, removing the corporate tax base from America.
12. Prohibit corporations from having two sets of financial books. Corporations are now allowed to submit one set of numbers to the shareholders and another set to the IRS. If you tell the shareholders that we made a profit, then pay the fair tax on that profit!
In the 1950s, corporate income taxes provided 33 percent of our federal revenues. In 2002 it was down to just 10 percent.
13. End the tax breaks for corporate jets. Require corporate executives to declare the actual cost of the flight as income when using these jets for personal use. IRS rules now allow them to declare the equivalent fare on a commercial airline instead of the actual cost to the corporation.
14. Stop the corporate abuse of tax-exempt insurance companies. Many companies have formed tax-exempt insurance companies as a subsidiary to evade income taxes.
15. Restore integrity to law firms and accounting firms. Prohibit law firms and accounting firms from incorporating as limited liability partnerships (LLP) or limited liability corporations (LLC). These structures allow partners in these firms to shield themselves from liability if another partner does something illegal. The best way to ensure integrity in the accounting and legal professions is to force these partners to police their own firms to protect themselves from lawsuits.
16. Reject calls for a national sales tax to replace the income tax. Experts say the tax would have to be at least 25 percent to replace the income tax. It would hit the poor and middle classes the hardest. And it would trigger black markets to avoid taxation.
And last, but not least:
17. Resurrect the IRS. Make the agency the proud "Tax Police" it once was -- attracting the best and brightest agents willing to hunt down tax cheaters on behalf of all of us. Shield the IRS from politicians calling in favors for campaign contributors who have been caught cheating.
The IRS was de-funded, "de-clawed and de-fanged" in the 1990s. The agency still uses 1960s era computers. Please increase the funding for the IRS by at least $2-billion a year. This money will pay for itself in recovered tax revenues.
Encourage the IRS to pay bounties to those willing to blow-the-whistle on tax cheats -- both individuals and corporations. This bounty would only be paid after it was proved that we were truly cheated.
And finally, allow the IRS to go after those people and corporations that do NOT file tax returns. It is vitally important to enforce taxation among those who thumb their noses at our government by ignoring the requirement to declare their income. Restore the law that made it a public record whether individuals have filed their tax returns and paid the tax that they said they owed. The rescinding of this law led to the widespread tax evasion that we currently are suffering from.
Sincerely,
[insert your name here]
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Extraordinary People (Spiritual Awakening)
by Bob Uhlar; January 15, 2001
Back in 1980, I saw the movie “Ordinary People.” The movie, adapted from a novel, follows a family coping with a tragedy. The oldest of two sons has died in a boating accident. The younger son, Conrad, is having a difficult time dealing with the loss of his brother.
As the story progresses, we follow Conrad’s sessions with a psychiatrist. We learn that Conrad accompanied his older brother on a sailboat when they were surprised by a thunderstorm. The boat capsized, leaving them both clinging to the hull. The older brother grew weary, let go of the boat and drowned.
Late in the movie during another session, Conrad has a startling revelation as to why he has been feeling emotionally tortured. Deep down, he feels guilty for holding on to the boat when his brother let go. At the conscious level, he realizes the absurdity that he feels guilty for not being dead. The psychiatrist asks him, “So do you think you can live with the fact you survived?”
His realization comes like a lightning bolt. He is deeply changed by his newly found freedom and he begins to relate to everybody in a different way.
Leaving the theater, I remember thinking, “Psychotherapy must be like that. You have lightning-bolt revelation that changes your life.”
I found that is not necessarily true. Some people have a “lightning bolt moment.” Some people have a series of “Aha!” moments. Others have a long string of smaller incremental revelations. It doesn’t really matter how you take the journey. It’s reaching the destination that counts.
The same can be said of a Spiritual Awakening. People experience the journey in different ways. Before we proceed, let’s try to define what a spiritual awakening is.
A spiritual awakening is an event or insight that, when experienced, changes an individual’s life. A person perceives, God, other people, and the entire world in a different way from that moment forward. A person feels like he or she has awakened from a dream and is ready to face the world with a new set of rules and behaviors.
What has the individual awakened to? The realization that this person is one with God -- at all times. This realization expands to know that all individuals, animals, plants and the entire universe are also a part of the spiritual absolute that is called God.
Some individuals, however, have these realizations transposed. In this case, the individual has a moment in which that person feels a sudden oneness with everything in the world and the universe. In most cases this realization progresses to encompass God as well.
Many individuals find that a crisis in their life serves as a catalyst for a spiritual awakening. In facing a crisis, many people discover that their rational or intellectual approach no longer solves their problem. An individual is forced to “think outside the box” (as business consultants were fond of saying in the ‘90s to stir creativity). An individual might pray to God for help.
Must you have a crisis to have a spiritual awakening? Not necessarily. But it seems that an individual must experience some stirring within the soul that says, “The way that I have been approaching life is not satisfying me -- not serving my true needs.”
In his book No Boundary, Ken WIlber says on page 85:
The movement of descent and discovery begins at the moment you consciously become dissatisfied with life. Contrary to most professional opinion, this gnawing dissatisfaction with life is not a sign of “mental illness,” nor an indication of poor social adjustment, nor a character disorder. For concealed within this basic unhappiness, with life and existence is the embryo of a growing intelligence, a special intelligence usually buried under the immense weight of social shams. A person who is beginning to sense the suffering of life is, at the same time, beginning to awaken to deeper realities, truer realities. For suffering smashes to pieces the complacency of our normal fictions about reality. and forces us to become alive in a special sense -- to see carefully, to feel deeply, to touch ourselves and our worlds in ways we have heretofore avoided.
The “lightning bolt moment” that some people experience can be triggered in many ways. Some inividual’s moment comes when they’re listening to a lecture, either in person or via radio or recording. These individuals often report that one particular sentence or phrase triggers a realization of a deeper reality. Others talk of an experience walking in the woods or viewing a beautiful scene in the natural world.
However, I would caution those who experience a “lightning bolt moment” of the misperception that the spiritual awakening is complete. Many individuals discover that an awakening is the first step on a long journey of individual spiritual evolution.
Fundamentalist Christians have the similar tradition of being “born again.” Some will ask, “Have you been born again?” Many will cite the day and time that they were “born again.” While this is a valid experience, I’ve noticed that some fundamentalists do not open themselves to the possibility that there might be more to come.
If a fundamentalist were to ask me, “Have you been born again?” I would say, “Yes, and again and again and again...”
One man told me that early in his spiritual search he went to a Billy Graham crusade at a stadium. After the sermon, Rev. Graham said, “Anyone ready to be saved by Jesus Christ, come forward to the base of the platform.” He came forward. He was truly moved by the baptism.
So, he came the next night. Rev. Graham gave the same sermon and once again called people forward. The man asked one of the stadium helpers, “I already did this last night. What do I do next?”
“There is no need to do anything else,” came the reply. “You’ve been saved.” But that’s not the way it felt to this man. He wanted to explore the spiritual realm that he had discovered.
Generally, a spiritual awakening is accompanied by a hunger to learn more about the spiritual nature of the universe. Many people experiment with various spiritual approaches until they either find one that resonates with them or grow weary of the search and give up.
My own spiritual awakening came incrementally over time. Although, I did have a few watershed moments.
When I was a young boy, I remember fantasizing about a deeper reality beyond what I was seeing and experiencing. I’d picture myself wearing a “virtual reality helmet” (30 years before such a thing was invented). While I was seeing “my reality,” I was actually moving in a universe of forms that paralleled what I was experiencing. For example, if I saw myself sitting on a chair, the unseen universe was actually swelling up substance for me to sit on. Everything in the unseen universe was made of the same substance -- the same”stuff.” I did not discuss this perspective with anyone, but I now see the parallels with quantum physics theories.
I went to a Catholic grammar school in which I learned that God would be displeased with me if I did not do my homework and obey my teachers. By the time I reached college, I made the conscious decision to walk away from Catholicism. It was not serving my needs.
During college, I was exposed to basic transcendental meditation. However, I did not dedicate myself to practicing it on a regular basis because “there were better things to do with my time.”
I met my first wife in college. Since her family practiced Reform Judaism, I took some college courses from the divinity/philosophy school. I remember taking a modern Jewish literature class. We read Elie Weisel and the like.
Four years later, I enrolled in a weekly class given by a reform rabbi, designed for non-Jewish spouses. He took an ecumenical approach, showing us the parallels between Jewish and Christian traditions and teachings.
But deep down I found myself comparing these religious traditions to the God I knew to be true. One problem was that during my 20’s, I was taking an intellectual and rational approach to my life while suppressing a rich intuitive undercurrent that was growing restless.
But in 1986, as I approached my 30th birthday, I found myself feeling dissatisfied with my life. I realized I had made a series of compromises that took me away from many of the things I considered important in life.
I took a series of bold, irrational steps that led to a separation and eventual divorce from my first wife. In retrospect, I realize my intuitive side “busted out.” My intellectual side was shocked to see my intuition doing a much better job of perceiving my life and the world around me. Within days of this flash point, I signed up for regular therapy with a clinical psychologist.
In September 1986, after my first wife and I separated, I went out on a date with Carla Golden, a woman I would marry two-and-a-half years later. We found that our spiritual beliefs were virtually identical.
Carla also had a gentle way of pointing out the dysfunction in the way I was approaching life -- especially the passive-aggressive way I was approaching aspects of my budding relationship with her. At the same time, I was taking an active part in my weekly therapy sessions and reading self-help books.
In January 1987, Carla confronted me with some actions I had taken. I used a meditative exercise in which I went into my “house” to have a conversation with my inner child. I found my inner child hiding in a basement closet fearing that I would kill him.
I would come to realize that my mother had severely beat me once when I was about age seven. While she would choose not to beat me again, the incident changed how I related to authority figures and women in general.
While this did not appear to be a “lightning bolt moment” of spiritual awakening, this was a watershed psychological moment. It changed the way I perceived the world because I realized the errors in how I had been approaching it.
But as Confucius said, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” I discovered Unity in Chicago the next month. I started to learn spiritual principles that were in alignment with what I always had believed about God. But they also challenged me as I realized I needed to take responsibility for all I had experienced in my life.
This led to about eight months of confusion. Had I made a mistake in separating from my first wife? Could I repair any of the mistakes and errors I had made?
I noticed my spiritual evolution was generally in increments after that -- one small “Aha!” after another.
But in 1990, I had several powerful spiritual experiences at a retreat in which I shared five days of exercises with about 20 people. In one of these, I was in meditation. I felt a force enfold me and literally massage all my muscles at once. I asked spirit, “What is happening?” The answer was, “I’m preparing you for the journey ahead.”
I’ve noticed that one of the transformations that comes from spiritual awakening, and the evolution that follows, is that you put God first. You gradually find yourself devoting more of your conscious time to knowingGod and following the guidance that comes from that awareness.
This focus allows you to express your true nature. With this expression comes fulfillment.
Ken Wilber phrased it well in the closing paragraph of his book No Boundary:
Real spiritual practice is not something we do for 20 minutes a day, for two hours a day, or for six hours a day. It is not something we do once a day in the morning or once a week on Sunday. Spiritual practice is not one activity among other human activities; it is the ground of all human activities, their source, and their validation. It is a prior commitment to Transcendent Truth lived, breathed, intuited, and practiced 24 hours a day. To intuit your real self is to commit your entire being to the actualization of that self in all beings, ... If you feel this deep commitment to realization, to service, to sacrifice, and to surrender, through all present conditions to infinity itself, then spiritual practice will be your way naturally.
#end of article#
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