Sunday, April 14, 2013

The Income Tax Lottery!

I have what may be a way to solve our debt problems once and for all!

We all have to pay the income tax and we all have to wade through the instructions or hire an expert to lead us by the hand.  And we all know that there are many people who avoid paying taxes by staying under the radar, or who have such clever tax dodges that they get away with paying a minimal amount. Various proposals have been made to deal with this issue, from national sales taxes to flat taxes to...

But what if we turned our income tax day into a national lottery, with a hundred million-dollar prizes, and for each $5.00 (or some such small amount) paid into the IRS for income taxes we would get a ticket for the lottery.   Prizes could range from small to large, or a lifetime exemption from income taxes or...  The more you pay in, the more chances you have, and the prizes would themselves be tax free.  Perhaps people could buy additional tickets, but only if they had paid their income tax already.

You could give extra tickets for early filing, or for whatever reason you want to encourage.   Would you find such a system appealing?