Friday, March 11, 2005

An economically progressive national lottery

How about a door prize for tax-return filers? Each person who files gets his or her social security number entered in a drawing to be conducted by the IRS. The Treasury funds the grand prize as well as any lesser awards from either the current or the last year's income taxes. You get the appeal of uniformity you see in flat tax proposals, a PR boost for the IRS and a regular incentive for filing while allowing the poor to gamble at the expense of the rich. That's the way to run a government lottery! I bet $10 million per year would buy you a much happier country and might be recouped many times over through increased filing and compliance.

Anybody wanna start a movement? What do we call it? I suggest Campaign for a National Door Prize.

(that is, a campaign for an "NDP" with apologies to the New Democratic Party of Canada , who are however most welcome to the idea, should they like to run with it.)

1 comment:

Alexandra said...

I like as well and I also think it is only fair that you would pay taxes on your winnings :)

Also, being from Canada, I do think the NDP would like that...they are into the re-distribution of wealth and all that :)