Suggestions for improving tax-amnesty effort

As the tally for New Jersey's tax-amnesty program hits $700 million, politicians are quick to "gift" it back to the public. Yet, I wonder if they have asked why the amnesty program was so successful.

Is it possible that New Jersey has not properly invested in its enforcement against delinquent taxpayers? Is the predictability of an amnesty program every six-nine years getting taxpayers to hold back?

Are some penalties just so stiff that once people fall behind, they cannot get back into the system? (Penalties for the nonfiling of sales-tax returns can run more than 1,000 percent per year. One individual who owed $1,369 in sales taxes was recently asked by the state to pay more than $50,000 in order to satisfy his liability.)

I urge our legislators to "invest" part of the windfall to:

• add $20 million per year (a mere 3 percent of the $700 million) to the budget of the Division of Taxation to better serve our taxpayers and to collect from "deadbeat" taxpayers — we should be getting our money every year, not just in amnesty years;

• reduce unreasonable penalties — a penalty system more in line with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which usually caps out at 25 percent of the underpaid tax, seems to make more sense;

• put money back into the rainy-day fund — after all, we won't be having amnesty income every year;

• put $175 million back into the unemployment trust fund of the $1.1 billion "diverted" over the past decade — by doing so, we will roll back a portion of the payroll tax increase and reduce its drag on the economy.
E. Martin Davidoff
East Brunswick