Life, Death & Cheating on Taxes

I'm sure you are very aware at this point that many of President Obama's nominees for key executive positions, including Cabinet positions, have been put under intense scrutiny for the fact that many of them seem to have trouble paying the correct amount of taxes. Before you go jumping to any conclusions, this isn't a hit piece on President Obama or an indictment of the way he is selecting nominees. There are many other good blogs which can provide meaty vitriol for even the furthest right-leaning conservative. I aim to raise a larger issue.

Is there anybody in a position of power in this country who doesn't cheat on his or her taxes? I suppose with so much money coming and going and so many investments to track it could be easy to lose sight of a few hundred dollars here or there. The problem is that many of these tax bills are reaching into six figures and for a system which must necessarily rely on the fiduciary responsibility of its key players, this is simply unacceptable.

Another issue this raises is why anybody could in good faith, intelligence and conscience continue to insist that giving the government more money is in everybody's best interest. The IRS is supposed to be the most ruthless, cunning, seriously accurate department in the entire U.S. government. How much money is slipping through the cracks and adding to the immense deficits we are expected to run in the next decade? Not just legal loopholes but simply money that was intentionally or unintentionally not paid to the government. Can we really trust the government to handle such large scale programs as taking over trillions of dollars or bank assets or running large-scale national healthcare for everybody? Count me as a skeptic. I used to believe in only three things: life, death and taxes. Now, I'm not so sure about that last one.