4
Thursday, March 4, 1976
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN Comment
Opinions on this page reflect only the view of the writer.
1040 taxing patience
If all else fails, read the directions, so they say. Although it's probably a good adage, it isn't necessarily true. Struggle through the seemingly never-ending directions of tax form 1040 may bring no better results than frazzled nerves and the much publicized Excedrin headache.
THIS YEAR 81.4 million Americans will be filing income tax forms. Of that number, two out of every five or 32.6 percent will be found to need it necessary to hire a tax preparer.
This problem has come up because of the overly numerous credits and deductions that can be used. Loopholes may occur in your system that few could ever understand.
And the situation is only getting worse. This year's Form 1040, covering 32 pages, is one-third fatter than last year's.
IT AND THE entire tax system have become the subject of bitter discussion among tax-reform crusaders and frustrated taxpayers. William Simon, secretary of the treasury, has stated that "the present tax system is so riddled with exceptions and complexities that it almost defies human unintentional control." He reached a point where I'm not even sure the IRS experts fully understand the system any more . . . If we didn't have it already, nobody would ever invent it."
A $30 tax credit for each personal exemption and several other credits and deductions for different taxpayer classifications have further complicated this year's forms. More than half of the first 55,000 forms filed at the
IRS' New York City office didn't claim the $30 credit. Many more aren't claiming the new earned-income credit.
EVERY YEAR, the writers of tax forms seek a more concise and understandable way to word directions. But this effort is like offering a pain killer to someone with a broken arm while refusing to put the arm in a cast. Just as all the pain killers in the world won't fix the arm, neither will simple words make the tax system uncomplicated.
What is needed is a change in the structure itself. Simon has suggested one plan that would do away with most of the credits, deductions and exemptions and replace them with a simple, progressive tax structure. Under this plan, Simon argues, the standard deductions. Because of the lack of deductions, Simon argues, the personal tax rates could be reduced without any loss of revenue.
OTHER PLANS have called for a tax system that would collect a flat percentage from everyone. Surely with study and consideration a simpler system can be found. But this all must come in the future through a series of hearings, votes, caucuses and compromises.
For now there is no encouragement for those who still must file this year. The only suggestion is to start immediately. The filing deadline is April 15, a month-and-a-half away, and can take half of that time just to read all of the complicated instructions—before attempting to comprehend them.
By Marne Rindom Contributing Writer
BRENDA DARLING, IF THEY THINK NIXON'S TAXES WERE A MYSTERY...WAIT TILL THEY GET OURS!'
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
Kansan Telephone Numbers
Newsroom-864-4810
Business Office-864-4258
Published at the University of Kansas weekly
journal, The KU Press. Subscription periods. Second-class postage paid at Law-
nance office or $13 a semester or $14 in Douglas County and $16 a
weekly subscription is $2.00 a semester paid through the
subscriptions are $2.00 a semester paid through the
Editor Carl Young
Associate Editor Campus Editor
Billy Hagglin Yael Abushak
Associate Editors Allan Abushak
Assistant Campus Editors Jim Bates
Screenwriter Steven Pierce
Photo Editor David Crawsham,
Staff Photographer George Millman
Sports Editor Allen Quakenbush
Associate Sports Editors Steven Stone,
Entertainment Editors Steve E怀利,
Erik Hawp,
Business Manager
Harry Doyle
Baby Earth
Assistant Business Manager Advertising Manager
Assistant Business Manager Advertising Manager Assistant Director Promotion Manager Classified Manager Debbie Service Manager Prison Management Manager Promotion Direction Manager Scott Bush Assistant Business Manager Jim Marquardt Assistant Classified Manager Joelsen
Letters Policy
The Kanan welcomes letters to the editor, but asks that letters be typewritten, double-spaced and no longer than 400 words. All letters are subject to editing and condensation, according to space limitations and the editor's judgment, and must be signed. KU students must provide their name, year in school and hometown; faculty must provide their name and position; others must provide their name and address.
Snuff films stab freedom
This isn't to say that the conspiracy has made me believe in moral censorship. But I have to admit that by the time we get to sniff films, I'm on shaky ground.
I sometimes think I am being tested by some sinister conspiracy determined to find out just how libertarian I am.
TIME AND TIME again this
I keep thinking about the time I want to see "1 am Curious (Yellow). It was the usual museum crowd; a few loners scattered around and eight loud delegations from organized living groups. The film started and that was probably the cinematic climax of the evening. To be perfectly accurate, I don't know if film I've ever seen in my life.
If they are fakes, then the problem isn't with the films, it with the people who go to see them.
MOST OF IT was a fat Swedish woman interviewing people in the street about immigration, and she would take off her clothes.
' QUICK—MORE NAILS! '
they settled for screening at the screen and making smart remarks. By the time the whole school had completed several dozen cans of Coors beer
By Jim Bates Contributing Writer
If SNFUCE FILMS show actual murders, the films shouldn't be shown. Even if the victim was willing, which is extremely doubtful, it would probably be illegal.
conspiracy arranges for people and institutions to act in a way that shakes my belief in the individual's sacred right to see and do just about anything he wants. Because I already believe humans are a mixture of good and evil elements, the moral question that convinces me that evil is number one.
For the most part, the movies depend on the word of mouth that they're talking about but I'm telling ya, they really tell her!" and people's curiosity.
Advertisements for snuff films usually show some rather darkly drawn woman slightly screwed up, with blood bleeding. Across her body is slashed the film's title and the words 'a film like this could only be made in South America,' or something to that effect.
The crowd was a bit upset. For the first 20 minutes or so.
The latest straw on my back is snuff films. These films, which were made decades ago, decided that porchography is a dead end, allegedly portrait a victim, usually a raked woman, hacked to death on screen.
IT'S DOUBTLEF that these films show actual murders. The film makers usually talk out of them when they tell the law enforcement agencies one thing while implying a completely different story.
responsible for the crowd's behavior. Its behavior was already determined before it came to the theater. Pornographic films, however, help bring the behavior out. In this the anticipation of a pornographic film brought it out.
I'M NOT SAYING that pornographic movies were
I wonder what pornography does to a person's sensitivities. Many people who go to a really hard-core film are excited and involved for the first half-hour, but by the time the last half-hour rolls around, they're sound asleep.
been thrown at the screen and a row of seats almost destroyed. The scene was funny and frightening all at the same time.
Seeing something that many times must be desensitizing to some extent.
Do they help bring out hidden aggressions in the viewer? Do they desensitize a person to the point of murder and violence by telling them way regular paragraph desensitizes a person to sex?
I still believe that freedom of speech extends to movies—even pornographic ones. I still believe that it is silly—and probably impossible—to legislate morality.
AND NOW IT'S snuff films.
and jump up and down on other people's.
SO, IF THE society were perfectly fair and perfectly good. I could see some attempt overlapping. Even in our imperfect society, I can see the necessity for laws to prevent people from killing each other. I wouldn't stop one of it's members from watching a film that allegedly杀了一 person killing another. For now, at least, I have become individual rather than a totalitarian government better than a totalitarian government for 2,500 years.
And I hope I will continue to believe it.
But I suspect that complete freedom will, in the long run, mean that a society will cut its own threat. People can't handle it. They take too much advantage of their own freedom
I just wish the conspiracy would let me go on believing it in peace.
Americans have it good
American people "aren't happy now," there is indeed much to be unhappy about.
WASHINGTON—From the stage of the Kennedy Center for the performing Arts in Washington, D.C., it was hard to see the girl's face or to guess her age. But the National Town Meeting radio show was being held on Wednesday long time in a side ask to ask her question. It was a sad question about happiness.
IF I HAD w my wats about me, perhaps I might have traveled. Thomas by saying he happiness happening in other conditions of mankind, is
general statement, that the American people 'aren't happy we see one look only at the dark side and forgets about historical perspective, plenty of evidence shows the man's woman's view. Several mullions
HER NAME was Carol Thomas. When this country started, she said, evidently people were happy: They spoke of the Declaration of Independence. "But I take a look around," she said, "and the people aren't happy now." Her thought was that happy people put their trust in government, question was how happiness and trust might be restored.
By James J.
Kilpatrick
(C) Washington Star Syndicate
Former Senator Eugene McCarthy was one panelist; I was the other. Neither of us made a very coherent answer, but the girl's plaintive observation has stuck in my mind. The teacher had been made to Carol Thomas? IS IT TRUE, simply as a
relative. Are Americans unhappy? Compared to what?
persons are on work; other millions are on welfare, ill housed and poorly fed. Our marriages have been crime, drug abuse and racial tension. Last year, a million marriages ended in divorce.
Such an indictment could be long extended. Congestion, pollution, regimentation, the abuse of power, the sense of being a victim in familiar themes. We pundits harp increasingly on them. If the
Are we less happy than the people of Africa? Of India? Of Southeast Asia? One does not know that if the libraries of Polynaua to note the palpable fact: Other areas of the world know vastly more squail, more poverty, more sheer misery—and much less freedom—than Americans have ever experienced.
THE YOUNG woman
recalled America's beginnings.
She supposed our people were happy then and she thought them less happy now. The same reason led her to a right to the pursuit of happiness also proclaimed that all men were created equal. It was not so. Of the roughly four million inhabitants in the colonies, perhaps 700,000 were slaves. When she was born, there was a bitter time of it, but slavery at least is long behind us.
'AND NOW ON 'D' FLORIDA'
Happiness is a state of mind,
a contentment of the spirit.
When my mother was born in
1894, only 5 per cent of the adult
population had been graduated
from school; almost all the
people were illiterate. By
1920, when I was born, about 17
per cent of the people were high
school graduates; only 6 per
cent were illiterate. Today 60
per cent of our people are high
school graduates; only one per
cent are illiterate.
WE TOO EASILY paint over the religious bigotry that long infected America. Most of this is gone now. We bemoan the poor participation in elections; we forget that over much of our country, the American youth age-olds could not vote at all. Can it be said that Americans are less happy, in material terms, than they used to be? Nonsense! Millions of our people grew up with mud roads, kerosene lamps, outdoor privies and flypaper. They grew up with week, with child labor and with unreliant learning in mine and factory. Who imagines that our people were happier then?
It is doubtless true, as Carol Thomas said, that many Americans aren't happy today. But in every society, in every country, people are unhappy—and certain kinds of discontent are useful. We knock our wonderful country too much. We might better be down on our knees, thanking God that we are compared to other peoples in other countries and compared to our own times past—no one else ever had it so good.