You Want to Patent What!?

According to the International Herald Tribune, patent law is getting tax crazy. Get this: because a U.S. appeals court passed down a ruling that business strategies could be patented in 1998, individuals can now file for patents on tax strategies. As a matter of fact, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has already issued around 50 of them and there are more pending.

Andrew Cohen at washingtonpost.com writes: Don't Take My Advice-It Belongs to Me:

"Attorneys now are patenting their novel ideas, in the tax code area, so as to try to prevent or limit their competitors from also using those ideas to better serve their clients."

It appears now that when your friendly H&R Block tax preparer accepts your shoe box of prized receipts he may need to do a patent search before he can utilize tax strategies to save you a little of your hard earned cash. Do you have any idea how long it takes to do a patent search!? Those of you who are accustomed to e-filing need to crack the old patent law textbooks as well or you could find yourself on the receiving end of a lawsuit for using someone's patented strategy for saving yourself a buck when filing your taxes.

If there was ever a reason to reform our tax system and get rid of the thousands of pages of tax codes, here ya go!

I'd like to continue to voice my grandiose support of the FairTax but let's face it, Americans for Fair Taxation ARE lobbyists. Lobbyists are considered likely beneficiaries of these new patents, considering that they are in the position of lobbying Congress for new tax breaks and often the first to be privy to the information of a passage of a new tax break on behalf of their clients.

I have to confess, while still loving the idea of the FairTax I have become quite disillusioned with the organization which runs the grass roots effort to see it hoisted into law. Get ready to start all over again hitting your Congressmen and Senators up to support it and co-sponsor it under a new Congress and Senate. It just seems like a vicious cycle to me. I agree it is important to educate people about it and yes, it's important to contact your representatives about it, I agree that without Americans for Fair Taxation it wouldn't have the great numbers of supporters it has today (and that said, I didn't hear about the FairTax from Americans for Fair Taxation or one of their grass roots supporters, I heard about it from Neal Boortz) but we get all these co-sponsors in the House and Senate, then we have a new House and Senate and have to start the process all over again.

Will anyone ever actually bring the FairTax to a vote!? Grrrrrrr.