Taxes - I screwed up yesterday - Granite Grok

Taxes – I screwed up yesterday

Pay taxesThat’s right.  On April 15th, I messed up big time.  Actually, I figured it out on Monday, the 14th, as I did my taxes on a vacation day.  How badly had I booted it the previous year? Yeah, I’m getting a refund.  Which means that I failed – I just gave Obama an interest free loan for the year for the US Government, after taking my money from me legally by the 16th Amendment (which was originally sold as “just target the few highly rich people”).

Sidenote: “After all, the first tax ranged from merely 1% on the first $20,000 of taxable income and was only 7% on incomes above $500,000….(Ed. note: Expressed in 1994 dollars this sentence would read, “the first tax ranged from merely 1% on the first $298,000 of taxable income and was only 7% on incomes above $7,460,000.”)…The collection process was greatly facilitated in 1943 by a device created by FDR to pay the costs of WWII. It was called “withholding from wages and salaries”. In other words, the tax was collected at the payroll window before it was even due to be paid by the taxpayer. Economists point out that this device, more than any other single factor, shifted the tax from its original design as a tax on the wealthy to a tax on the masses–mostly the middle class.”

So, I’m mad at myself for not doing the right calculations and mad that, once again, we see the Left’s persistence on incrementalism – create a man-made need based on ideology (as opposed to solving a real life problem),  work for years without giving up to get that camel’s nose under the tent, and then proceed to re-arrange everyone’s behavior with that leverage.

Happy to get a “refund”?  It seems like EVERYONE is happy when that happens: “Look, Uncle Sam is sending me money” – and a lot of people seem to believe that is actually the truth and don’t think it through that Uncle Sam took it from them in the first place.  Thanks to uber-Progressive FDR for the hoodwink.  Not fair to say that?  To a point – the US almost went bankrupt before winning WW II and this was one reason why (the other was the absolute hard selling of US Savings Bonds).  I’ll give him that – the country WAS fighting for its life.  We all (at least, those of us who actually pay income taxes which is only about 53% of the American population), however, have to remember that it is OUR money.  Sure, we are a rich country (the national and state debts aside for the moment) but many politicians treat it as the nation’s wealth and since they are “our leaders”, they have the wherewithal to “allocate it” as they wish – and ignore the fact that this wealth is the private property of those that have earned it (either through direct labor or true investments (and not the “faux investments” that Democrats say they are doing as a euphemism for plain spending).  It IS ours, not theirs, and it is only for the public good only when we say it should be.  However, politicians on both sides of the aisle are that drunk with their own self-importance wish to forget that little fact (and us, too).

However, just as Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus during the Civil War but it was restored afterwards, withholding should have been stopped after our military and financial “call to arms!” was over.  To me, this was one of the biggest things that has allowed Government to grow because it became almost painless for Government as most people only remember the net net of their check and only seldom ever get the full measure of “they’re taking out HOW MUCH that I can’t spend on my family???”.  If it doesn’t hurt, there’s not much blowback.

Contrast that if every week or month, each wage earner had to sit down, write a check, stuff it in an envelope, and send it in (or PayPal or equivalent in).  And instead of having that AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax) for the upper end, we ought to have a MMT – a Mandatory Minimum Tax indexed to the national deficit and debt that must be paid on November 1st by anyone that otherwise would not have to contribute to the Fed’s greed for green.

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