Death and Taxes

Let’s talk about taxes. Everybody hates taxes. Well, that’s not entirely true. What we hate is PAYING taxes. We don’t mind them so much as long as somebody else has to pay them. As Ben Franklin quoted, taxes are as inevitable as death, and just as necessary. Let’s face it, nobody wants to die, but can you imagine how over populated we would be if medical science were able to do away with death? It would be a very crowded world. And if there were no taxes our nation would come to a standstill.

Without taxes we wouldn’t be able to pay for traffic cops and teachers and librarians and firefighters and public hospitals and any number of useful things we all use and enjoy such as parks and streets and sewers and the list goes on and on. So our government has to have taxes. The only countries without taxes are those with huge deposits of oil. But then, obviously, those countries have an alternate method of acquiring the revenue necessary to run a country.

Every country has to raise taxes. We had a temporary income tax during the civil war, which was made permanent in 1913. Of course, we also have sales taxes, property taxes, gasoline taxes, and any other number of taxes to bring in the cash the government needs. The Méxican president, Santa Ana, back in the 1860s, actually raised money by taxing the number of doors and windows of Méxican houses thereby being the first government official to effectively tax the air people breathe. Nobody likes to pay taxes. That’s why the government sometimes calls the money they collect something else.

You see, one way or the other, when a government needs money, like we do now, both in our nation, and in my home state of California, which is having a budget shortfall crisis, it has to raise taxes. That’s the only way a government can get money. So when a government is feeling the pinch, it has to raise somebody’s taxes. Now they can either raise everybody’s taxes, or they can raise the taxes of a specific group of people. For example, your car registration is a form of taxation, because any monies raised by the government can be defined as a form of taxation. So when the state raises your car registration fees, they are raising the taxes of people who drive. Of course, that’s just about everybody.

So, rather than raise income taxes of everybody, or even just the wealthy, most states have raised the amount of money students must pay in fees to state universities. So, in effect, what the government has done is to raise the students’ taxes. They’re not taxing everybody, just the students. When a government refuses to give a raise to government employees to adjust for the cost of living, they have raised the taxes of government employees. When the government raises the amount of money that medi-care recipients must pay for medical treatment, it has raised taxes on old sick people.

Increasingly in our country, we have, in the last eight years, cut the taxes of the wealthiest 2% of the population, while raising the fees for any number of services to others to compensate for the loss of revenue due to those tax cuts. So we have chosen, as a nation, to raise the taxes of those with the least ability to pay those taxes, rather than to raise the taxes of those most able to shoulder the tax burden. Thus, we have chosen to tax the poor rather than to tax the rich. And there are reasons the government does this.

For one thing, the poor generally have few lobbyists in Washington D.C. to speak for them. The poor also have fewer resources to fight those fee increases. In addition, the rich, having the money to pay for well-informed accountants and lawyers, have the resources to shelter their income from taxation. That’s why many large corporations pay no taxes at all and even often receive large tax refunds. So when you vote for a candidate who promises to cut your taxes, the odds are that you will still pay those taxes in the form of increased fees. For example, California’s governor will not condone a tax increase for those earning more than a million dollars a year, but he has said he will approve legislation to raise the sales tax, thereby insuring that everybody will have to pay more taxes, not just the rich. And those rich folks who put him in office will end up paying more taxes in the form of sales tax as well thus offsetting any money they saved by not paying more income tax.

Ireland is considering instituting a property tax. In the past, Ireland charged a tax in the form of a stamp duty that was paid once when the house was purchased. Now, in order to fund the much needed infrastructure such as roads, schools, etc., the government of Ireland has decided that an on-going property tax would be better as it would provide a continuous source of income. Naturally, homeowners in Ireland are not happy with this turn of events. But the money has to come from somewhere.

Of course the government, and by government, I mean ANY government, wastes a lot of money. But then, governments have always wasted a lot of money. I’m not sure that there is any way to stop that. Elected officials will always try to get more for the people who vote them into office. So there will always be “pork”, as long as we elect our leaders. Before the last election in México, PRI, the previous ruling party, went out and bought new ovens and other goodies for the people in the ranchos hoping to win their votes. It bothers us when the government wastes money. But then, speaking only for myself, I know I waste a lot of money too. And so do you. Keep track of how much money you spend in a little notebook for a week and you’ll be surprised by how much you spend for crap you don’t really want or need.

One way or the other, if we want to have those government services we cherish, like a military and medical research and space exploration and such, we’re going to have to accept taxes. The government needs money to run and they get that money from us. The only choices we have are who will be taxed. When any candidate says they will need to raise taxes, s/he is only being honest. And when a candidate says that s/he will lower taxes, s/he is lying through his/her teeth. You can’t lower taxes and keep the government running. You just change the people being taxed. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Consider this scenario. California used to offer a free college education through the California State University System, which now costs about three grand a year. I know three grand doesn’t sound like a lot for college, but three thousand bucks may as well be three million bucks for a hell of a lot of poor people. I know I couldn’t afford it right now. Anyway, if we returned to offering a free college education, then more people who wouldn’t have been able to go to college would now be able to receive a degree and would, therefore, be able to get a better, higher-paying job, that would then bring in more revenue to the state in the form of income tax. If that person ends up in a low-paying dead end job, then the state receives no income tax at all from that person because he or she wouldn’t be earning enough to pay income tax.

Providing more government money for libraries and schools means more librarians and teachers, which means more revenue in the form of income taxes. In other words, put the money in the hands of the poorest people, and the government ends up getting that money back in the form of taxes. Put more money in the hands of the rich, and that money ends up in savings accounts or invested in companies that are, no doubt, sheltering most of their income so the government never sees any of it.

The logic that has been proposed thus far is to tax the people who use the services. Thus, people who drive pay higher fees thereby raising money for roads, etc. People who actually go to the university, pay for that university through higher fees. Tax the user. But then, on the other hand, we give tax exemptions to people with children, thus reducing their taxes. And yet, these children require us to have schools, for which we ALL have to pay taxes. Maybe only parents should have to pay taxes for schools. Obviously, that is absurd. We ALL benefit from an educated populace. If only we had one. I know, maybe we should only tax the people who actually BENEFIT from a war for the cost of that war. Our grandchildren will be paying for the war in Iraq and as far as I can see, we could just as easily be sending our money to Haliburton for all the good the war is doing.

Death and taxes are inevitable. The only choice we really have is whom to tax. Don’t you think it’s time that everybody shouldered the burden of paying for our government, instead of putting the burden on the poor and middle class? We’re already providing our children for the war. I somehow doubt that many of the children of the wealthy have made the choice to go into the military and go off to fight.