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Mikado,
There are many loopholes, but many of them don't apply to you and me. They apply to the super weathly. I've talked to my accountant about some of them and what he says is "yeah, you could do that, but it's on shaky ground legally. The govt could call you up about it and it would cost way more than you save to fight it." But for the super wealthy that bargain is fine. They save so much that any legal bills would pale by comparison. And the IRS isn't going to go after them anyway because they know they'll have an expensive fight on their hands with little hope of winning against slick, high price lawyers. This is the reason the tax code needs to be vastly simplified.
While it's true that minimizing your taxes is perfectly legitimate, that's not what we're arguing here. We're arguing that the tax system needs to be altered so that the richest Americans shoulder a greater percentage of the tax burden because they have greater disposable income. In a way this is our duty as Americans to help support the system that allowed you and I to become high wage earners. To not leave scorched earth behind us.
I had an interesting idea the other day. What if the IRS moved to more of a merit based system? If they gave out public awards for paying taxes. That way everyone would know who was being a good citizen and who wasn't. Corporate CEOs could compete for better awards. You could walk into someone's office and see "Oh, look, they've got the million dollar tax award." Make paying taxes a positive thing, not a negative. I mean really, shouldn't people be proud of making America a better place???
I'm sure this idea has tons of holes, but thought I'd throw it out there.
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