I don’t think people who oppose higher taxes are crazy. What I find crazy is that their opposition is directed at the wrong taxes and the wrong taxers.
Forget the formal definition of “tax.” What a tax really is in the real world as applied to real people is any money the government scoops out of the pockets of its citizens and businesses.
Fees for all kinds of government services, for example, are going up these days, many of them steeply. You want to drive, get married, prove you were born, have your neighborhood trash picked up, in many place it costs more. That isn’t labeled a tax hike but it’s the real world equivalent.
And how about fines. All kinds of things that used to be technically fineable but were never enforced with fines are now being enforced in a costly way around the country. Jaywalking. Drinking from an open beer while walking, or an open cup of coffee driving. Talking while driving. Not putting everything that should be recycled in a recycling bin. Fines, fines, fines. A kind of tax, tax, tax.
The most notable increase in this seedy quasi-tax fining realm, of course, involves driving and parking. The big election year issue in 2010 is about extending Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class and well-to-do, But for people with incomes of less than $200,000, the extra income taxes paid if these lower rates are not extended is just a few hundred dollars — about half what you pay if you’re caught going through a red light in parts of California, or parking in a handicapped space in a great many places.
Another example of major tax increases billed as something else takes the form of far more aggressive tax collection. A friend of mine in Philadelphia just got hit with a Business Privilege Tax assessment for income supposedly earned 21 years ago. 21 years! Who keeps personal tax records that long, or business tax records for that matter? Try defending yourself from that kind of assessment.
In New Jersey and many other states businesses are not worried that new state taxes will be enacted, no latter who gets elected governor. They are shelling out lots more to the revenuers, however, because said revenuers are doing more audits about more kinds of state taxes that could once be fudged, like taxes due on goods bought online.
Of course the IRS is doing its own part to increase collections without the need for a tax increase. If you’re self-employed there’s an excellent chance you have received a a mail audit notice lately, asking you to justify some deduction or other. It was a commonsense deduction, you reply. No receipts, you’re out of the luck, the answer comes back. Pay up.
I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be fined for a municipal infraction. I’m not saying people shouldn’t pay all their local or federal taxes just because governments didn’t enforce some of their tax laws all that emphatically in years past.
What I am saying is that instead of arguing over things that haven’t happened yet (higher federal taxes), if taxes are your pet peeve, focus on where they are actually going up fastest for the greatest number of people. You make $40,000 a year and Congress extends Bush-era tax breaks, you save perhaps $200 a year in federal taxes. You get two parking tickets while visiting a friend in the hospital, you’re out of pocket $230 — just to visit your sick friend.
In this year’s great tax debate, it’s time to focus on reality instead of ideology. Time to remember what Gertrude Stein might have said (had she been a financial writer): “A tax is a tax is a tax.”
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