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All Hail the Grassroots Campaign

PRNewswire/ -- PlainTaxTalk, a grassroots group announced it has launched a campaign to urge the IRS to use plain language in all its public documents and forms to help the average American taxpayer comply with the tax laws.
"The idea behind our movement is simple," says the group's founder John Klotsche, a former Senior Advisor to the IRS Commissioner, "vastly improve American taxpayers understanding of their tax reporting responsibilities."
"The IRS needs to jettison its archaic habits of obfuscation and substandard communication and embrace the principles of plain language, recognized as the universal gold standard for all written communications," said Klotsche.
The 'tax gap' -- the taxes Americans owe but don't pay -- is estimated by the IRS to be north of $300 billion each year. Deliberate evasion causes some of this but most results from unintentional behavior. This is because taxpayers simply don't understand, or won't take the time to understand, their tax responsibilities. For every 1% increase in tax compliance levels, tax revenues would increase $20 billion.
"Plain language is much more than wordsmithing documents," said Klotsche. "It is reader-focused writing that uses document design techniques to produce clear and understandable information including planning the document, designing it, organizing it and writing clear instructions using plain English."
Tax simplification can come about legislatively, administratively, or both. The Congress endlessly talks about doing something but never does. Will Rogers' contemptuous quip is a reminder of this gridlock: "The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets." PlainTaxTalk would not bet the farm on a legislative fix and believes the IRS should step forward and take the lead on tax simplification.
PlainTaxTalk believes the IRS should take the complicated mess the Congress has created and using tested, modern-day plain language principles and techniques tell the American taxpayers in simple, understandable words how to go about quickly and accurately reporting their fair share of the taxes they rightly owe. That's what PlainTaxTalk is all about--in plain language.
The cover article published today in Tax Notes magazine, PlainTaxTalk: The Yellow Brick Road to Tax Simplification, presents the case for plain language at the IRS. The group's Blog site at http://www.PlainTaxTalk.org provides a forum for comment.

Full post as published by Building Rapport on June 01, 2009 (boomark / email).