Shooting just around the corner

I just read Peter Pappas' post about a man in Dayton, Ohio opening fire on an H&R Block employee (which he read about on WebCPA). According to Yahoo! maps, the bar where the shooting took place is just over 7 miles from my house. That's a little frightening.

This seems to be a classic example of shooting the messenger (forgive the pun, as I don't know another way to say it!). And as long as the system is out of control, I wager we'll continue to see taxpayers blaming tax professionals. I figure the only way this will slow down is if we get a system in place that is transparent and understandable to taxpayers. We all know it, now we've got to figure out how to make it happen.

A place to start the dialogue is Professor Nellen's 21 Century Taxation blog, which recently celebrated its third anniversary (congrats!). If we can somehow manage to get a lot of us "messengers" in a dialogue and come to some agreement, maybe we could make progress on getting the public and Congress on board with serious reform. Of course, getting a large body of tax professionals to agree on a reform plan is going to take some work. I figure once I get these kids a little older, I'll make that one of my long, long term projects. Someday my kids will thank me for it! Maybe...

In the meantime, I'll be safe from angry Dayton taxpayers when I move to California in a few weeks. Although I'm guessing the taxpayers aren't much happier there.