Taxes and Tea Parties

Every April, every­one has taxes on the brain, even if they’ve taken care of things months ago.  Yes­ter­day was America’s “Tax Free­dom Day.”  In the­ory, that’s the day that the nation has earned enough money to pay off our tax bur­den.  Awfully late in the year, isn’t it?  It’s actu­ally ear­lier than it has been in recent years.   Tomor­row is the dead­line for income tax filing.

All of these taxes, astro­nom­i­cal as they seem, are prob­a­bly not even going to touch the hole that our cur­rent finan­cial stim­u­lus pack­age is dig­ging.  And oh yippee, the incen­tives to buy houses that peo­ple really can’t afford, make me a lit­tle bit more nau­seous every time I see them.  You know the ones I mean, those com­mer­cials on TV that “now is the time to buy a house, have an $8000 tax credit!”  Every­thing else aside, does no one real­ize that those homes are going to be in the same sit­u­a­tion in just a few years?   These mea­sures are mak­ing it easy for peo­ple who can’t really afford to get a mort­gage to get a mort­gage, on top of res­cu­ing peo­ple who can’t pay their cur­rent mort­gages.   The down­ward spi­ral is just going to con­tinue tight­en­ing unless some­one allows us to just hit the bot­tom already!   Peo­ple don’t learn when they don’t get appro­pri­ate con­se­quences.  Rad­i­cal change is nec­es­sary, some­thing to shake up the cur­rent mind frame of rely­ing on mea­sures like spend­ing our way out of a finan­cial crisis.

Obvi­ously, our tax sys­tem is ridicu­lous.  Surely we can all agree on that, even the peo­ple in love with the cur­rent stim­u­lus pack­age.  There are so many pages upon pages of com­plex­ity, that most peo­ple who file their taxes online with no help but a com­puter pro­gram are mak­ing errors.  Online fil­ers usu­ally have a com­puter to check the sim­ple math, and I know that when our tax returns were even filed with typos, they were sum­mar­ily rejected.  One of the rea­sons for that com­plex­ity is cor­rup­tion.  K Street is filled with lob­by­ists and advo­cates that are cur­rently earn­ing every penny they are paid, finagling breaks for their employers.

There are going to be Tax Day Tea Par­ties all over this coun­try.  This move­ment has been accused of being “Astro­Turf” — that is, a fake grass­roots move­ment.  Hon­estly, I’m feel­ing rather jaded right now and tend to sym­pa­thize with that sen­ti­ment.   The street full of peo­ple who are furi­ous at the Democ­rats for poli­cies that will result in rais­ing taxes may think they are com­pletely sin­cere, but blam­ing the Democ­rats for the sit­u­a­tion is disin­gen­u­ous.  Poli­cies have been cor­rupt for a long time, and the cur­rent sys­tem just encour­ages more of it.  Dis­cussing real change is imper­a­tive. Rail­ing against the pow­ers that be is nice, but solu­tions are in order.  Hope­fully, whether these move­ments are fake or not, peo­ple will start open­ing their minds to new ways of look­ing at things, instead of busi­ness as usual. There are a cou­ple of tax plans out there that I am aware of that really excite me.

The Flat Tax sys­tem is a far sim­pler alter­na­tive to our cur­rent sys­tem.  Under it, every­one above the poverty level would pay a stan­dard 17%.  This would apply to indi­vid­u­als or busi­nesses.  Every indi­vid­ual would get a per­sonal exemp­tion, but no loop­holes or spe­cial cir­cum­stances would apply.   This plan has been float­ing around for over a decade, and a few years ago brought back to atten­tion by Steve Forbes.

For years, I’ve been a fan of the Fair Tax sys­tem.  Even though it’s on loan in Louisiana right now, I even have my own first edi­tion print­ing of The Fair Tax Book, signed by John Lin­der and Neal Boortz.  This last pres­i­den­tial elec­tion it got a lit­tle bit of press, but not enough. The Fair Tax is a national retail sales tax on new goods, with food and other essen­tials being exempted.  The 16th Amend­ment would be repealed, and no more income tax.  It would be a pro­gres­sive tax sys­tem, because rich peo­ple sim­ply do spend more.  Still, the mil­lion­aire next door could con­trol the taxes paid by con­trol­ling con­sump­tion.  It would dis­cour­age waste­ful­ness and encour­age respon­si­ble mon­e­tary habits.  That would mean more reduc­ing, reusing, and recy­cling, too.  Bonus! I really do love this plan.

As tired as I get from bang­ing on the same drum year after year, I hope peo­ple are truly think­ing this week.   Let­ters need to be writ­ten to con­gress­men, peo­ple need to vote, peo­ple need to write about the issue, even when they’re feel­ing jaded.  We all need to get involved.  At those Tea Par­ties all over the world tomor­row, or sim­ply if you are sick of it all, talk about solu­tions. I’m really encour­aged when I hear peo­ple will­ing to think out­side of the box, instead of clam­or­ing for more revi­sion of the same old system.