Taxpayers target of confusing system

The Revised Gettsbury Address (Author Unknown)

(Yes, I said Gettsbury, not Gettsburg.)

Three score and five years ago our fathers brought forth upon this nation a new tax, conceived in desperation and dedicated to the proposition that all men are fair game.

Now we are engaged in a great mass of calculations testing whether that taxpayer or any taxpayer so confused and so improvished can long endure.

We are met on Form 1040. We have come to dedicated a large portion of our income to a final resting place with those men who here spend their lives that we may spend our money.

It is altogether anguish and torture that we should do this but in the legal sense, we cannot evade — we cannot cheat — we cannot understand this tax. The collectors, clever and shy, who computed there, have gone for beyond our power to add or substract.

Our creditors will little note nor long remember what we pay here, but the Bureau of Internal Revenue can never forget what we report here. It is for us taxpayers rather to be devoted here to the tax return which the government has thus far so nobly spent.

It is rather for us to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these vanished dollars we take increased devotion to the few remaining; that we here highly resolve that the next year will not find us in a higher income tax bracket.

That this taxpayer, underpaid, shall figure out more deductions; and that taxation of the people, by the congress, for the government shall not cause our solvency to perish.