Disrupting Taxes

Disrupting Taxes paperback book cover
Author	Thomas J. Cryan
Language	English
Genre	Nonfiction
Publisher	InterTerra New Media/Editorial Production KN Literary Arts
Publication date	Paperback: September 6, 2024 Audiobook: November 20, 2024
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print and Audio
Pages	180
ISBN	9798990774209

Disrupting Taxes: Applying Technology and Science to the Tax System, Reigniting the American Dream, and Exploring the Forgotten Stories of Taxes, Gold, and Money is a nonfiction book and audiobook written and read by Thomas J. Cryan, an attorney, media executive, entrepreneur, and author. It is Cryan’s fourth book. The paperback was released on September 6, 2024, and the audiobook was released on November 20, 2024, as a Serial Podcast on YouTube.

In Disrupting Taxes, Cryan points out the challenges with the current US tax system and offers a new solution, the Automated Banking Transaction (ABT) Tax.

Cryan explains that currently, almost 90 percent of all federal tax dollars are collected from taxes on working individuals’ salaries and income ^[1], only about 10 percent of all federal tax dollars collected come from taxes on corporations ^{[1] [2]}, and the US pays over one trillion dollars in interest payments each year on its national debt ^[3].

The book goes on to explain that historically, it was not always this way. In 1943, at the height of World War II, the tax burdens were shared equally between American salaried workers and corporations, as they each contributed about 40% of total federal revenues ^[2]. But that sense of shared contribution soon disappeared, as politicians began catering to special interests over national interests, passing a series of tax reform acts in the 1980s and 2000s, allowing for the reduction of corporate taxes, creating many exemptions and loopholes, and in turn shifting the tax burden dramatically onto the salaries and incomes of individual workers ^{[4] [5]}.

Cryan believes there have been major consequences as a result of this shift. Today the US National Debt is over $35 Trillion, about 120% of GDP, with no end in sight to deficit spending, where before 1980 the National Debt was only 30% of GDP, and the tax burden was shared more equally between corporations and individuals ^[6]. Further, individuals born around 1950 had a 90% chance of earning more than their parents; where in contrast, people born in 1985 and after, have a less than 50% chance of earning more than their parents ^[7]. Cryan believes the correlation between the shift of the tax burden onto workers’ salaries and the decline of people able to out-earn their parents makes the American Dream difficult to achieve. He presents these facts in Disrupting Taxes.

Cryan then details a new way to think about taxes, our national debt, and the American Dream.

He explains that for any tax system, the widest tax base possible, at the lowest tax rate possible, applied equally across the entire economy, would be the fairest tax a government can implement ^{[8] [9] [10]}. He presents a new solution he calls the Automated Banking Transaction (ABT) Tax—a breakthrough concept driven by technology. Scientifically supported in Disrupting Taxes, the ABT Tax proposes to widen the tax base exponentially, at a very low rate, shifting the historic burden away from workers’ salaries, and spreading the tax burden across all corporations, individuals, and participants in the economy.

The ABT Tax system would eliminate all self-declared tax filings of individuals and corporations and replace it with a small banking transaction tax of 1% across all banking transactions while eliminating the need for the IRS. Using existing widely adopted modern banking technology, the ABT Tax system would permanently reduce taxes for nearly all Americans by fairly distributing tax collection across all banking transactions in the economy. The idea is that everyone - corporations, drug dealers, visitors, the rich and the poor - all pay taxes, at a very low rate; no company or individual is exempt. Everyone would pay, making the tax rate mathematically very low while the federal government would collect sufficient revenue to provide a viable means to balance the federal budget ^[11].

Cryan opens the book with an Introduction, telling a story of ancient Egypt, and its relevance for today; and closes the book with an Epilogue expanding on a thought experiment from the book A Theory of Justice, by John Rawls, called the “Original Position”, behind a “Veil of Ignorance”. The major themes throughout the book are covered in each chapter as follows:

Part 1: The Forgotten Stories of Taxes, Gold, and Money

• Chapter 1: The Big Question: The US Tax Code…Is There a Better Way?
• Chapter 2: In the Beginning: The Interrelationship of Money, Gold, and Taxes in the US
• Chapter 3: The Fog of War Triggers Bad Decisions: Income Taxes in America
• Chapter 4: The Ticking Time Bomb: National Debt
• Chapter 5: The Great Deception: Individuals and Companies Do NOT Follow a Shared Tax Structure or Burden as You Might Think
• Chapter 6: The Link Between the Tax Base, the Wealth Gap, and the American Dream
• Chapter 7: The Problem of an Expanding Wealth Gap
• Chapter 8: We Do Not Have a Theory of Optimal Taxation
• Chapter 9: The Core Issue with Taxes

Part 2: Using Technology to Collect Taxes: Equitably Reigniting the American Dream

• Chapter 10: Introducing the Automated Banking Transaction (ABT) Tax
• Chapter 11: Real Fairness: A Mathematical Tax Base of All Transactions
• Chapter 12: The Firewall: Protecting Stock Investments
• Chapter 13: The Digital Technology of Banking Now Makes the ABT Tax Possible
• Chapter 14: Eliminating the Tax Filing and Bookkeeping Burdens: Unlocking Value for All
• Chapter 15: Removing the Inequality of Tax Loopholes
• Chapter 16: Not Only Equitable, but Effectively Progressive
• Chapter 17: Progressive Taxes: A Legal Precedent on Shaky Ground
• Chapter 18: Supporting the Pillars of the Free Market and the American Way of Life
• Chapter 19: The First Principle: Applying the Laws of Physics to the Economy and Our Tax Structures (Part 1)
• Chapter 20: Carnot Efficiency: Applying the Laws of Physics to the Economy and Our Tax Structures (Part II)
• Chapter 21: Entropy: Applying the Laws of Physics to the Economy and Our Tax Structures (Part III)
• Chapter 22: Beware of False Critics, for They Are Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing

Part 3: Keeping the Faith: Protecting American Institutions

• Chapter 23: All That Shines: The Gold Standard and the Money Supply
• Chapter 24: A New World Order: The Bretton Woods Agreement
• Chapter 25: Bedeviled: GDP and the National Debt
• Chapter 26: Democracy Is Fragile: The ABT Tax Is a Structure for the Future

Disrupting Taxes discusses the Automated Banking Transaction (ABT) Tax, a new transaction tax system proposed by the author. According to Cryan, this banking transaction tax system is not only theoretically possible; it is technologically achievable. By harnessing already existing banking technology and implementing a comprehensive strategy to institute a national ABT Tax system, he believes the US could revolutionize its tax system.

Here is how Cryan explains it would work: instead of relying on roughly 150 million working people to provide almost the entirety of the US budget by paying a large percentage of their salaries in taxes ^[1], the US would expand the tax base to all banking transactions, conservatively estimated by economists to be approximately $600 Trillion dollars annually ^[12]; where the proposed tax rate is 1%; providing for the collection of the needed $6 Trillion annually ^[12] to balance the budget and pay down on the National Debt. Cryan believes that disrupting the tax system by replacing the IRS with the ABT Tax would establish a tax system of real fairness.

Mathematically, Cryan says that this proposed structure would provide far lower tax rates for all taxpayers while also dynamically promoting the free market. And, in part of the book, Cryan provides a thought experiment for analyzing tax systems, applying the science and math of the Carnot Efficiency Formulas to the current US tax system and the ABT tax system. According to the results, under the ABT Tax system, all parties in the US economy would be free from undue (and at times unseen) governmental tax burdens, and the most fair and efficient prices for goods and services would emerge to the benefit of all society ^[11].

The title of the book is derived from a quote that opens the book, “If you don’t innovate fast, disrupt your industry, disrupt yourself, you’ll be left behind.” By John T. Chambers, former CEO of Cisco Systems.

Kirkus Reviews detailed Disrupting Taxes as “A provocative study of a subject too important to be neglected” and “A fascinating proposal” where “The author deftly sketches a brief history of tax policy in the US.” ^[13]

Thomas J. Cryan is an attorney, media executive, entrepreneur, and author of several books, including Freddie Steinmark, The Next Paradigm, and 3 Principles, as well as numerous articles on law, politics, broadcasting, and communications.

Authority Magazine

News 4

Accounting Today

Tax Notes

Kirkus Reviews

• Official Disrupting Taxes website
• Official Thomas J. Cryan website
• Official InterTerra New Media website

• Official Freddie Joe Steinmark website