John R. Bullis: Tax laws should be in tax acts

I don’t understand why Congress puts new tax rules in various other tax laws.

Important tax laws seem to be in the other (unrelated) tax acts such as:

The Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes (PATH) Act of 2015 (Public Law 112-13, 12/18/2015)

The Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act (Public Law 114-94, 11/2/2015)

The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 (Public Law 114-74, 11/2/2015)

The Surface Transportation and Veterans Health Care Choice Improvement Act of 2015 (Public Law 114-41, 7/31/2015)

The Trade Preference Extension Act of 2015 (Public Law 114-27, 6/29/15)

The Achieving a Better Life Experience Act of 2014 (ABLE Act), part of the Tax Increase Prevention Act of 2014 (Public Law 113-295, 12/19/2014)

That is all in addition to the U.S. Supreme Court decisions and IRS revised regulations.

Would it be so terrible if the tax provisions were only in tax acts Congress passes?

The real need is for tax simplification and correcting tax laws that make our country less desirable for corporations. We seem to be happy and satisfied for large businesses to move operations to other countries. That reduces the operations in USA and moves a lot of jobs to other countries.

I also don’t understand the restrictions Congress puts on folks from other countries that want to work in USA. Most of us have families that came here from other countries. Some recently came here and many came here years ago. They became good citizens and helped our country grow and prosper.

Maybe I just don’t understand Congress and their failure to act timely and completely.

However, Congress did recently make some tax provisions permanent and extended some other tax provisions to apply in 2016 and in some instances even longer in the future. That is certainly an improvement to the recent years of passing laws in December that apply to the entire year. It is difficult to plan when the laws are not in place before the year begins.

Thank goodness we at least have opportunities to vote every once in awhile!

Did you hear? “The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the least possible amount of hissing.” — J.B. Colbert, c 1665

John Bullis is a certified public accountant, personal financial specialist and certified senior adviser who has served Carson City for 45 years. He is founder emeritus of Bullis and Company CPAs.