The late great Jeff MacNelly reminds us above of just how much joy it is making our way through a maze of arcane tax regulations to determine just how much of our money BigGov will generously allow us to retain. Today is Tax Day. April 18, 2024 will be Tax Freedom Day, which is the date when the average American has made enough money to pay his taxes. The rest of the year, you lucky soul, you are working for yourself! The average member of the middle class in this country shells out almost one out of three dollars for taxes of all types. Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that taxes are the price of civilization. He should have added a coda: over taxation is often a sign of civilizations in decline.
I have paid my taxes for my first year as a small business owner.
I now understand how libertarians happen. pic.twitter.com/YzWUlMDfDv
— Ed. Condon (@canonlawyered) April 18, 2022
Fortunately we know that our taxes are put to good use:
He should have added a coda: over taxation is often a sign of civilizations in decline.
Numerically, at the very least.
As I’ve mentioned, we just welcomed #7; while mom was visiting, I mildly embarrassed a 4-child family by introducing them as the other family with lots of littles at our church. (There’s several families with 4+ kids, but most of them are in high school.)
When I was a kid, mom and dad were the people with “a bunch of kids” in the places we lived.
… Three.
And they got a lot of crud for it, especially since it was three under five.
They’re both early to mid baby boom, as are their siblings– my husband’s aunts and uncles had a slightly higher average of children, but also a significantly higher number of partners, to the point that I’m fairly sure my side is actually closer to replacement.
We are hitting the make it or break it point for the echo boom, so… here’s hoping we manage to straighten things up a bit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0zaebtU-CA
Computers aided tax filing has encouraged tax computation to become increasingly arcane since the machine does the work. Now the IRS encourages filers to use its machine. Not good. The US system is different from other places in that the taxpayer has the opportunity to figure what amount is legal instead of the government demanding an unexplained share.
We keep being more like subjects and less like citizens. It will lead to trouble.
Income taxes are complicated because of carve-outs for this and that sector that members of Congress insert and defend. It’s another example of public corruption. Eliminate the carve-outs. (Mr. Reagan and Mr. Carter had some aspirations along these lines, and that’s it four our last 16 chief executives).
A different example of politicians building patron-client relationships would be the gusher of grant money which is distributed to state government, local government, higher education &c, all with compliance costs attached. Limit grants to state and territorial government to general revenue sharing determined by formulae and end grants to corporate bodies of all kinds (commercial companies, philanthropies, state universities &c), and provide foreign aid in the form of services, equipment, and credits to buy equipment. I suppose you might have a residue of grant distribution devoted to contributions to certain inter-governmental agencies and some funds devoted to emergency relief.
Condon’s post/tweet/whatever is exactly right; I had that sticker shock the first year (and each subsequent year for that matter) of my small business.
It would be fascinating purely as a sociological experiment to see what would happen if income withholding was completely eliminated.
It would revolutionize thinking if we could toss out withholding and it’s sinister cousin, mortgage escrow.
Highlight what folks really pay, and to whom.