On tax day, there has to be a better way.

Today is April 15. A day many Americans dread. And for good reason. Today is the day when we must satisfy our obligations to our federal and state governments by filing our taxes. Of course, paying taxes is the cost of our democracy. Our taxes fund the costs of public schools, our roads, our libraries, our military, our police and our parks. But much of our money gets wasted too. And it shouldn’t be so difficult to fill out our tax forms. Our system of collecting taxes is in many ways unfair with all those loopholes allowing the very wealthy and corporations to avoid having to pay their fair share. That leaves the rest of us hard-working Americans to make up the difference.  There has to be a better and more fair way to make sure everyone pays their fair share of taxes, but no more. Because under our current system, the top one percent own 40% of the wealth in this country. That is not good for our democracy. Congress needs to work together to come up with a more fair system of taxation so that we don’t have to dread April 15^th quite so much.