I don't get the Trump tax issue

Trump advisers say tax writeoffs show his 'genius' as businessman

The tax code is just a huge complicated maths story problem. You toss in income, deductions, credits, and all manner of other nonsense which Congress and the President have decided to lard into the tax code. You then turn the crank, and, boom, you get a number. If the number is positive you owe tax, if zero, or negative you don't, or might even have a carry-able, or rebatable deduction. 

All the taxpayer, or preparer does is follow this incredibly complex word problem for quite simple maths. The answer is the fault of Congress, and the President, not the taxpayer. How does Trump get pilloried for doing the maths right? I could understand if the opprobrium were heaped on that old backslapping carbuncle VP Biden, he's been in the Senate since time immemorial. But Trump had nothing to do with the nonsense.

The real question for the politician, and media types who are shilling this story is, do you take deductions, and credits, or not? If you do, how are you different then Trump? Of course, they are not. The point of the tax code is to pay what you owe, not to pay some greater amount. Paying the correct amount is neither genius, nor knavery, it is simply the correct maths answer. That is what is fair based on the law. But oddly, here it seems that Trump the media types, and pols think he should have paid more. If so, did Clinton take a home mortgage deduction? Other deductions, why? She also should have paid more.

This is one of those odd idiot issues that arise because we stupidly demand that politicians release their tax information, when half of the population pays no income taxes at all. How is any of this information even tangentially relevant to choosing a President? We get these awful candidates in part because no sane person would agree to the invasiveness of the Presidential candidacy process. We've engineered a process assuring us the worst possible candidates, and we are too foolish to chuck this idiot system.

We need to return to focusing on the serious, eschewing the inane, and choosing good, qualified people to do the task. Eliminating the income tax, and moving to a sales tax would be the best idea. We would mostly not even need new tax infrastructure since most states already have that in place. The feds could simply allow the states act as collectors, and forwarders of this tax money. The feds could pay the states for this service, and likely the costs would be very low. The IRS could be all but eliminated, with only a vestigial collections aspect for recalcitrant businesses, and states. 

Tens of billions, or perhaps hundreds of billions would be freed up with the elimination of the various income taxes (personal, partnership, corporation, etc.). Hundreds of thousands of people would be freed up to pursue productive work. Businesses would be much more profitable. Taxes would be fair, and easily administered, and easily avoided by limiting purchases. The more robust the economy, the greater the tax take, so government would be incentivized to limit economically destructive laws, and regulations. We would end up with a thriving economy, reasonable, and easily ascertained taxes, and no IRS inveigling itself into every aspect of our lives from family, to love, to everything else.

What's not to like? Well, for the politicians, the lack of graft, and corruption is the problem. Income tax is a huge sump for politician graft, and corruption, so this will be a hard sell in Washington. So, we are stuck with this system because the pols want it. 

And they wonder why there is revolution brewing in middle America.

I wonder if the FBI will even bat an eye that the Trump tax returns have been illegally obtained, and released? Comey probably has more serious pressing matters.