Patents for Tax Strategies?
If This Doesn’t Prove the Need for the Fair Tax, I Don’t Know What Does?
From a subscription-only article in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal:
Patents on Tax-Related Ideas Stir Worry
Pressure is mounting on Congress to restrict government issuance of patents for tax-planning strategies.
Critics say these types of patents can raise troublesome issues for taxpayers. In addition to checking out whether a proposed technique is legitimate, taxpayers also may need to find out if someone holds a patent on the idea. Otherwise, they could get sued — as one man was last year in Connecticut.
I’ve been either preparing taxes or following the tax laws for almost 30 years, and NEVER knew that tax strategies are patentable. That they are, and that they are less than universally available to everyone without some kind of license fee or other financial arrangement, is absurd.
The tax laws are so complex and manipulatable that people are actually making livings figuring out how to game the system. A Fair Tax would eliminate all of that. I don’t dispute that there would be a substitute cottage industry that would try to play games with the Fair Tax, but it would, in my opinion, be much smaller and have a lot less wiggle room — as long as lawmakers leave the darn thing alone once it’s passed.
