A simple solution to our tax woes

President Obama deserves our everlasting gratitude for his excellent handling of the mess his predecessor left behind. While we were saved from a worldwide depression, there is still much more to do. Simply implementing some of the following suggestions could turn our national debt into a surplus and make Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare solvent for generations.

Instead of criminalizing human nature, thereby overcrowding our prisons and hospitals, let’s legalize, regulate and tax prostitution and drugs. And why not set up a national lottery, tax churches and create a new WPA which would provide the manpower needed to improve our decaying infrastructure while at the same time solving our unemployment problem.

And for heaven’s sake, let’s finally eliminate the most regressive tax swindle ever perpetrated on the poor and middle classes — the FICA free ride for the highest wage earners in our workforce. All wage earners pay taxes on the first $106,800 of their earnings, but no payroll taxes are paid on wages exceeding that amount. In other words, a worker earning less than $106,800 pays a payroll tax on every dollar earned, while our Congress, which is composed mostly of millionaires, has made all wages earned in excess of $106,800 immune from any FICA taxes at all.

The payroll tax should be collected on all wages, with no cap exempting the highest wage earners from paying taxes on all their earnings. For those who argue that this would be too great a burden on small businesses (employers are required to match the payroll taxes their employees pay) we could require businesses to match only the first $106,800 earned by each worker. In other words, the employer’s matching taxes would remain the same.

Gene McDougall Arlington Heights