Congressional Idiocentricity -- Tax Reporting Paperwork Landslide

Buried in the ObamaCare bill that had to be passed so we could learn what was in it, is a change to Section 6041 of the tax code which requires businesses to file 1099 forms with the IRS for almost any vendor they deal with and pay more than $600 in a tax year.  This means that payments for property or for services are covered by the mandate whether the company to whom the payments have been made is a corporation or not.  The paperwork and the nuisance are unbelievable.  Congress has lost its senses entirely.  This is the sort of systematic wrongheadedness combined with a complete disregard for reality that I have coined idiocentricity.  Well, Pelosi, you passed the ObamaCare bill and we just keep on learning what was in it.  No matter how idiocentric I believe Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Waxman, Franks, Dodd, and others of their ilk may be, they just keep surprising me over and over again.

Before a company submits the 1099 Form to its vendor and to the IRS, it must have its vendor fill out a Form W-9 with its address, contact information, and the company taxpayer identification number.  The total amount of work involved is huge.  As a business owner, I will be receiving many more requests to fill out W-9 Forms and I will have to fill out many 1099 Forms early in the new year when I am trying to catch up after my busiest time of the year in the Fall.  I will resent every moment spent in this way immensely.

Why did this idiot plan get foisted on us?

• The wording changes were slipped into the unread ObamaCare bill late in the process so they would not be discovered until after it was passed in accordance with Pelosi policy.
• Congress is desperate to eke out every last dime, no make that $0.04 given the Utah case of huge penalties and interest based on a claimed overdue payment of $0.04, to pay for its wild, drunken overspending.
• This is an underhanded way to help the Post Office with its deficits.
• It is a subsidy program for lumber and paper companies.
• It is a subsidy for tree farms.
• Transporting the billions and billions of forms will provide more income for truckers.
• Increased truck traffic will destroy the roads and bridges faster, leading to more construction and repair work.
• America will import more oil to operate more trucks, which will help the underdeveloped world by transferring American wealth to them.
• It is a plan to increase man's emissions of CO2 so Congress will have more of an argument for cap and trade taxes on the increased fuel imports and use and the CO2 will help corn grow better to produce more subsidized ethanol.
• Its a make-work project for accountants, a profession much-beloved by Congress.
• This will make businesses much more inefficient, thereby reducing the huge advantage in efficiency of the private sector compared to the public sector.  Reducing that difference will make it easier for the government to push for more socialism.
• Companies will try to concentrate their business on a smaller number of vendors to reduce paperwork.
• Small businesses will be both more burdened with the owner doing this paperwork and they will be preferentially shut out of business by larger companies trying to reduce their paperwork.

Of course, it may be that Congress in its haphazard sloppiness did not think of some of these obvious effects.  It is unwise to give them too much credit for any thought, however twisted.  But, it does seem clear that this Congress has an affinity for the line of thinking of that it is a good thing when a window is broken because the repair of the window generates business.  No one in Congress ever asks what tasks did not get done because the window had to be repaired, despite Bastiat having destroyed this line of thinking long ago.  No, that would require that those who think islands float and who do not care about the constitutionality of laws to be capable of thought and then to actually do it.  What an imposition that would put on these rulers who fancy themselves the elite and the aristocrats of American society.  How unfair and unjust of us mere peasants to expect them to think about the consequences of their laws as an essential part of their service to us.