Tax Blues

How often we hear this comment about taxes: “It’s our money that we earned and the government takes it from us.”  It would seem that a synonym for taxes would be “ripped off.”

I ask this:  If one rents, should the rent payment be called a rip-off? 

Think of taxes as a users’ fee for maintaining everything that has been brought to us by the blood, sweat and tears of those who came before us.   Roads, bridges and ports; a defense capability to protect us from without; a criminal justice system to protect us from within; a banking system to support the world’s greatest economy;  health and safety protection…..  Most people can add much to this list.

 So when people—politicians or pundits—say that the modest fee that we pay to maintain this incredible heritage is a rip-off, all I can say is shame…shame…shame.

Having said that (and I did in a recent letter to the editor of the Santa Barbara News Press), we have a seriously broken income tax system.  Politicians on both sides say it, but preparing my income tax returns this year, I became convinced that they are right.  Even with tax software, there is unbelievable complexity.  Much of the complexity is in the opportunities for getting a deduction or exemption and then pages of limitations that keep us from being allowed these deductions or exemptions. 

A clamor for tax simplification has sounded and resounded in Congress for years.  But nothing ever gets done.  Recently, Rep Dave Camp (R-Michigan) presented a tax reform proposal that was soundly rejected by both parties.  It was as though someone had dropped a bag of something very smelly on the congress floor and our elected officials pushed and shoved to stay as far away from it as possible.

Is there a hope to break this partisan gridlock?  Some have suggested a viable third party (made up of dissidents from the two major parties).  How about that?