As for the bits about a flat tax and a fair tax, yes, the Internal Revenue Code is overly complex. I’m not sure why that means we need to replace our regime with something regressive or “fair.” Besides, the rule about hobby losses is the opposite of overly complex. It’s very simple and straightforward.

There’s a case about a fellow named Dreicer who traveled the world, dining at the best restaurants and lounging in the best hotels on each continent. He tried to claim these were business expenses because he published a single book about his travels. This was properly deemed a hobby, because Dreicer wasn’t honestly engaged in a profit-seeking venture.

And Dreicer wasn’t some poor bloke following his dream. He was a trust-fund baby trying to write off (in today’s money) hundreds of thousands of dollars in income from his family trust. He liked fancy food and wanted the American taxpayer to foot the bill instead of paying his fair share of taxes.

I don’t know about Lee Storey, but the fact that she’s a lawyer by day who happens to lose money on some films doesn’t sound like a struggling filmmaker to me. It sounds like someone with an expensive hobby from which she can already deduct some (not all) of her expenses.

So all the woman wants is to make films. But instead she ends up spending countless amounts of money in addition to endless hours under horrific stress trying to prove that the part time movies she makes are a business and not a hobby.

This is an utter and total waste of time that only exists because of this country’s current, confusing and mind numbing Income Tax laws.

If the Income Tax system used by this country with all of its complexity and contradictions was actually simplified or totally gotten rid of and replaced with any number of other very simple tax systems (Flat tax, Fair tax, etc.), then this woman could have avoided the stressful, expensive and time consuming tax audits that she has endured.

To pour your life savings into films that do not make you a profit (you actually lose money) and then come to find out that the government auditors claim you owe them thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars on top of your losses, not to mention the legal fees you now have to pay to defend yourself, well this is not a tax system that can sustain itself too much longer.

The solution to all this does not lie in continuing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars battling the Income Tax code, but instead the solution lies in simplifying the tax code system itself.

Also, it’s snowing on my phone.