California Business Minute™

Hi, I am Tim Johnson and welcome to the California Business Minute.

Americans are concluding another tax year by meeting today’s tax deadline.
The seemingly tenuous task of tax preparation has been handed down over history.

Taxes have been with mankind since the dawn of civilization. Sumerians left behind
clay tablets recording taxes. In fact one reads, you can have a lord, you can have
a king, but the man to fear is the tax collector. Egyptian hieroglyphics depict
ancient tax agents getting tough on delinquent taxpayers. Many historians argue
that the Romans propelled their civilization to greatness through a tax system. 
And the Rosetta stone was a document granting tax immunity to priests.
Lady Godiva rode naked through the streets of Coventry in Great Britain protesting
taxes.  And perhaps the most famous tax action of all, the American colonies
launched a revolution against Britain’s King George protesting sugar, tea and stamp
taxes thereby giving birth to the United States.

America’s forefathers complained then as we do now that taxes burden consumers
disproportionately and history has shown that government bureaucracies expand in
order to collect the needed revenue.

Today, the US tax code and regulations are now over 17,000 pages in length.  Americans
collectively spend $5.4 billion hours each year preparing their taxes.  Taxes are now
so complicated that more than 57 million Americans feel it necessary to use a tax
preparer.  In all, the Internal Revenue Service employs more than 113,000 and sends
out nearly 8 billion pages of forms each year.

The old adage that you can count on three things in life is no more evident than they
are today – birth, death and paying taxes.

I am Tim Johnson and this has been the California Business Minute.