[fabsroman]

I will agree that we need a better tax system that allows a lot less cheating. We need something that people can understand a lot easier and one that the IRS can enforce a lot easier. Last year's tax gap, the difference between what people should have paid and what they actually paid, was $340 billion. A decade of recovering that, and some good budgetary controls, and we might be able to get rid of the national debt, or at least significantly decrease its size.

This past session, Congress was debating the elimination of the charitable deduction, or putting a floor on it of $400 before you could take any deduction whatsoever, because people always put something down for charitable deductions. Instead, they made the level of proof harder should you get audited.

Congress was also talking about limiting the home mortgage deduction to the interest on the first $400,000 of the loan, but that didn't get passed either.