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There’s nothing my spouse and I like less than paying taxes. It’s money we’d prefer to spend on just about anything else. In fact, we don’t know anyone who likes paying taxes.
Wealthy people, including our President, hire lawyers and accountants to look for what are called loopholes in the tax law that exempts a certain amount of income from being taxed. And why not? Even these wealthy people hate paying taxes.
This goes back to before the founding of our country. Some rich people actually endured a long and dangerous boat ride across the Atlantic Ocean in wooden ships from European countries to a wild and untamed America. There were a lot of reasons they did this, and tax avoidance was one of them.
Remember, in our early American history, an event called the Boston Tea Party. This is when some people decided to show England a thing or two by tossing crates of tea into the harbor. These people strongly objected to the government of England levying taxes on their tea.
Then there was the Whisky Rebellion. It resulted from our newly formed federal government imposing its first tax on a domestic product. George Washington had to take his rag-tag army out into the hinterlands to show force to those who rebelled against the idea of a tax on whisky. No shots were fired, but taxes were paid.
And have we ever gone a long way since then!
Today we pay taxes to the town/city, county, school district, state, federal government and more. You might say that our many levels of government have become very creative in finding ways to extract money from your pocket and mine. Unfortunately many of our fellow Americans don’t realize what is being done to them.
I put together a list of just some of our taxes.
When we fly, we pay air transportation taxes. When we drive, we pay taxes on gas and diesel fuel. When we build something, we pay building permit taxes.
We pay to register a business, unless we sell booze, and then we pay through the nose.
We pay business taxes, like income, stock and capital gains.
We pay cigarette taxes, although we would be better off not paying this tax by not smoking.
My kids have paid their share of driving fines which are in a sense indirect taxes. There are other types of indirect taxes as well like dog licenses, disposal fees, driver license and car registration fees, hunting and fishing licenses.
We pay social security taxes (both the employer and the employee pay), employer mandated health insurance, medicare taxes, unemployment, etc.
We pay income taxes, sales taxes on about everything, inheritance taxes, IRA early withdrawal taxes, library taxes, and on and on and on.
In fact when my wife and I got married we had to buy a marriage license which is also a tax. And our telephone, cable television and utility bills are loaded with taxes.
I noted the kinds of taxes that my wife and I pay, and I stopped after I had listed 100 different taxes, because my hands were tired of typing. I am also tired of paying.
So, while I am bellyaching about this, my wife she says, “Get real. What is the alternative? What is it that you want to give up?”
I asked her what she meant.
She said again “What is it that you want to give up?”
She was talking about the services that she and I receive in exchange for all of the taxes we pay. After all we do live in a wonderful community surrounded by a relatively safe environment, with clean water, police, fire and emergency services, roads to about everywhere, freedoms that are unheard of in most places on earth, educational facilities that are good to excellent, and an array of safety net programs that only a government can provide.
My wife is right. I have nothing to complain about. She and I and you benefit from the programs supported by our tax money.
The question is whether our tax money is wasted. The answer in my mind is yes, of course, some of it is wasted. In any organization, money is wasted on bureaucracy and bad decisions. It is just the nature of things. No person or organization is clairvoyant.
The real question is how much of our tax money is wasted. Likely a very small percentage, particularly since most tax money is spent on defense, social security, medicare and medicaid, pensions and other programs that are audited and closely scrutinized.
I asked my wife her opinion as to whether there is a better way than our paying all of these taxes. She said that yes there may be a better way. The problem is she doesn’t know what it is, and she doubted that I did either. She was correct. I don’t.
She said that when someone does figure it out that they will need to convince everyone else as well. And then we can all agree to a change. In the meantime we will need to ante up and pay our taxes.
Bill Gindlesperger is a central Pennsylvanian, Dickinson College graduate, Pennsylvania System Of Higher Education (PASSHE) Governor, former Shippensburg University Trustee, awarded numerous patents, as well as Founder and Chairman of eLynxx Solutions. eLynxx provides cloud-software for automated sourcing and managing of mail marketing, swag, packaging, and all things print. He is a board member, campaign advisor, successful entrepreneur, published author and commentator. He can be reached at Bill.Gindlesperger@eLynxx.com.
