Tuesday is #TaxDay.
But calling any single day “Tax Day” is misleading.
The income tax is less than half of what most of us pay the government. @KristinBTate has been researching that: pic.twitter.com/j5WfJxJJej
— John Stossel (@JohnStossel) April 17, 2023
“This is a question too difficult for a mathematician. It should be asked of a philosopher.”(when asked about completing his income tax form)”
Albert Einstein
I spend around 24 hours preparing the tax returns of my businesses and myself each year. No doubt my returns are more complex than those of most Americans. Each year I marvel at how poorly written and how contradictory the tax code is. Each year I do my best to file accurate returns. Each year I know there are places on my returns where I had to give my best guess as to just what was meant in arcane passages in the tax code.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. once opined that taxes are the price we pay for civilization. As usual Holmes was being more glib than wise. Some taxation is needed for civilization; taxation that becomes oppressive is usually a sign of a civilization in decline. In the beginning most taxes are instituted for some more or less necessary purpose, at least that is what is claimed. Over time they simply exist to feed an ever growing government. Unlike most associations we develop in our lives, government is completely involuntary and always has compulsion at its beck and call to ensure compliance. It is all too easy over time for government to simply become a mechanism to transfer funds to favored political groups. Until governments master this technique usually they stay small simply because taxpayers hate paying taxes. This taxpayer resistance is overcome when government is able to claim the allegiance of large groups that view themselves as net beneficiaries from taxation. When sufficient funds are not available, governments simply wish them into being through borrowing and the printing press. The best argument against big government is to closely watch how the funds taken and manufactured are used by the government each fiscal year. 63 % of the federal budget consists of transfer payments from collective Peters to collective Pauls. Christ noted that we should render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar. It is instructive that He never breathed a word about the care of the poor being a responsibility of Caesar, instead making it the duty of each of His followers. Relying upon Caesar to do this task is rather like using an army to provide day care services. Thus we have the modern welfare states that attempt at great cost to do what people should do for themselves or what should be the province of private charity. Government thus becomes ever larger and eventually begins to kill its host, the private sector. So here is to Tax Day, that monument to human hubris, chicanery and avarice!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1Gp6q6PEOo
I hand write my taxes simply to annoy the IRS and I will not spend one cent for Turbo Tax or H&R Block, et al.
Somehow this year I owed $1 [on a five-figure tax liability – tax accounting talk] which I duly sent two weeks ago, and they cashed the check which cost them more that $1. I’ll either get audited or receive a Participation Trophy.
I usually don’t watch movies for anything meaningful.
Returning to “The Shawshank Redemption.” I had missed how Andy was playing the system almost from day one. The scene on the roof where he gulls the cruelest screw with complete BS about tax on the $35,000 inheritance [well maybe in 1949, not today] is classic.
In conclusion, if I was running a privatized IRS, I’d maximize net income by each year by sending a bill for $79.89 to 10% of the filers. Almost everyone will send it in without a second thought.
There has to be a case for Eighth Amendment violation in this arcane, Byzantine mess we call the US Tax Code.
I often wonder during the months of March and April what would happen if by some clever communication, some 10 or 20 million taxpayers simultaneously decided to reconfigure their tax withholdings to minimize what’s taken out of each check for the year, and then simply not file in the spring of the next year. Just go dark.
The IRS would still know who those people were, of course, but it is something to imagine what that number of people simply refusing to participate would do and what the response would be.
All just woolgathering, of course.
[…] Sacred Catholic Objects Seeking New Home: England’s Rich Recusant History – NC Register Tax Day 2023 – Donald R. McClarey, J.D., at The American Catholic Championing a True Presentation of […]
Eh, that beginning clip between John Stossel and the young lady..is not entirely accurate. Close to half the taxes they referenced are state or local taxes. Those have nothing to do with the federal government.
As for simplifying the tax code, …I invite you to ask 331.9 million of your fellow US citizens and resident aliens to surrender their various tax breaks. That Shawshank Redemption clip provided an excellent example.
Before we worry about that though, we’d best start determining how to cut spending, so we don’t need to tax so much ..We have already gutted military spending; I suggest cutting lots of social programs. ..Doubtless that will raise a major rumpus as people will insist that someone, perhaps many, can’t live without this or that.
We didn’t get to this situation overnight.
there is something called the Fair Tax. because of special interests, it is unlikely to ever replace the income tax.
but it is worth educating oneself about it.