According to a recent Tax Foundation report, a majority of Americans feel their taxes are too high, the tax code is too complicated and needs to be overhauled, and some major opposition to taxes on fast food. The results were gleaned from a Harris Interactive Survey that polled taxpayers from all corners of the United States.
While the April 15th tax filing deadline has come and gone, we are still reminded on the pressing government dominance in our lives. If you were to ask anyone how they truly feel about taxes, the answers would most likely mirror the survey results from the Tax Foundation publication. In fact, the overwhelming majority of people polled said that those ages 45-54 and those of middle class income complain that taxes are too high. While the poll shifts for each geographic area, the opinion is still the same…we are over taxed and in need of relief.
Taxes do generate income for state and local governments, but wouldn’t it be better if we paid one tax every year to the Federal government that would be evenly distributed to the states? More along the lines of the Fair Tax. The Fair Tax would abolish the IRS and create a progressive national sales tax. We would be able to keep our personal income, as well as closing the loopholes to bring fairness to the tax system.
When we look back at taxes, it is the taxpayer who knows how best to spend their money. The only clue that the government knows how to spend money is through wasteful projects that will not directly impact the taxpayer. If there were more simplicity within the tax code, then maybe, Americans might begin to understand where and what their tax dollars will be used for.
Krystle,
While the fairtax has been proposed by many conservatives as being the solution to our tax problem, there are some problems with it that should be pointed out, and as such is why I believe we should oppose the Fair Tax. With respects to author Lawrence Vance,
First,
The stated rate of the FairTax is too low to achieve the promised revenue neutrality. The amount by which it is claimed that prices would fall under a FairTax system has been grossly exaggerated. There is nothing to prevent an income tax from being reinstituted, giving us a two-headed hydra of an income tax and a consumption tax. And not only would state and local governments have to pay a national sales tax to the federal government, the federal government would have to pay sales taxes to itself on all its new purchases.
Second, the “Fair Tax” really isn’t all that fair.
What’s fair about a consumption tax? Why is it that people who rightly criticize the income tax are so quick to accept a national sales tax on consumption? The FairTax perpetuates the fallacy that the government has a right to confiscate a percentage of the value of each new good sold and every service rendered. This is no different than claiming that the government has a right to the portion of each American’s income. As Murray Rothbard explained,
The consumption tax, on the other hand, can only be regarded as a payment for permission-to-live. It implies that a man will not be allowed to advance or even sustain his own life, unless he pays, off the top, a fee to the State for permission to do so. The consumption tax does not strike me, in its philosophical implications, as one whit more noble, or less presumptuous, than the income tax.
So Krystle it is important that we come at taxation from a very important mindset. That the government has no “right” to our money, our labor, or our wages. It is no different and no better to say that the government has no right to our income, but then somehow has a right to a percentage of each good and service that the free market handles.
Steve,
I agree with you that the government has no right to our money, labor or wages. The thing is the Federal government will need to obtain funds somewhere, because they are not going to cut back on spending or eliminate wasteful programs unless the “Chosen One” gets defeated by fiscal conservative in 2012 (preferably Mark Sanford or Jim DeMint).