Thoughts for tax day

Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the 17th-century French minister of finance, once remarked that "the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing."

from WSJ

One item that doesn't fall into the it-could-be-worse department—see above—is the U.S. corporate income tax. It's already about as bad as can be. This year, American businesses may spend 89 cents preparing their taxes for every dollar they pay in taxes.

In a new estimate, David Keating of the National Taxpayers Union estimates that the cost of compliance with the corporate tax is $159.4 billion—or 89% of expected tax collections for fiscal 2009, and 54% for 2008.

from WSJ