Taxed

Throughout recorded history, there have been taxes. Every empire, every nation has imposed taxation on its citizens and it is recognized that the operation of government requires taxation to provide the funds necessary to ensure that operation is as inefficient as possible.

Even Christ recognized the need for taxes and said, “Render unto Caesar, that which is Caesar’s”.

Of course, he was much more forgiving than most of us. Today, what Caesar took in the way of taxes to fund his wars and the expansion of the Roman Empire looks pretty good compared to what most of us get taxed.

It has gone beyond any rational understanding of the citizens of a nation contributing a portion of their income to maintain common services and infrastructure. It has become an unbelievable and out of control orgy of spending by governments and politicians who have forgotten that it is our money.

Everything is taxed now.

There are taxes on personal and corporate income, investments and other capital gains. There are sales taxes, consumption taxes, value added taxes and gasoline taxes. There are taxes to dispose of old tires, old computers and other electronics. We pay school taxes and property taxes. There are taxes disguised as user-fees for certain roads, bridges and the use of the sports and other facilities our other taxes paid to build and operate.  

The government requires the filling out of various forms for things like passports, birth and death certificates and then charges a fee for those same forms which is just another form of taxation. 

In Canada, there are additional surtaxes on everything from Health to Unemployment insurance and income over a certain level. The list is endless and the prevailing political and bureaucratic wisdom seems to be that if exists, tax the crap out of it.

There are even death taxes which I personally consider to be not only rude but just plain embarrassing. How little dignity does a government have to have that it scrambles to tax the pennies on your eyes?

I’ve been thinking about this because it is that time of year again, that time that we all dutifully sit down or have someone else we’ve hired sit down, and try to figure out how to screw the government out of taxes.

Personally, I don’t mind paying taxes. I believe that there are certain things that we need government to manage on our behalf like education, our military, health care,  communications and transportation infrastructure and a host of other services that are necessary for a modern, civilized society. 

But it has gone far beyond that now and I do resent that.

It has become so bad that instead of blaming politicians for this tax mess, we blame each other. “Tax the rich and all of our problems will be solved.” What a crock that is but it plays nicely into the hands of politicians who have no excuse for the staggering debt and oppressive taxes their outright mismanagement has created. As long as we are blaming each other, we aren't blaming them and that suits politicians just fine.

The rich aren’t responsible for the national debt nor are they responsible for the lack of money available from taxes to properly fund necessary services or attack things like poverty. Politicians are responsible!

And here’s another thing that just annoys the you know what out of me. Most of the organizations leading the charge on getting the rich to pay more in tax are themselves – tax exempt. In Canada, for example, Unions pay no tax on the money they receive in union dues nor do they pay any taxes on the money they make on the income they earn when they invest those dues. “Excuse me? You pay no taxes but are demanding others pay more?”

Non-profit charities are tax exempt and before you start ragging on me about picking on charities, let me remind you that the donations they receive are also tax exempt which means the tax payer gets to make that donation on behalf of whoever wrote the original cheque.

All kinds of groups from environmental foundations to academic institutions benefit from tax breaks the average tax payer could only dream of and when people talk about taxes, who ends up paying, Well…if you guessed it was the average tax payer, give yourself a gold star. We pay while they bellyache about how much more everyone else should pay.

It’s always somebody else (usually us) that should pay, never their cause or organization

Well, that’s just a field full of cow manure waiting to dry out in the summer sun. The simple fact is that we should all pay our fair share but the operative word there is ‘fair’.

The way taxes are assessed, collected and managed in most democracies is the antithesis of fairness. It is a system that is irrational, overly complex and oppressive on too many. In Canada, less than 60% of Canadians are paying 100% of the income taxes.

It’s unnecessarily complicated and that only adds to the inequity.

People have talked about a flat tax for years but it always gets diseased as too simplistic. Bollocks! (Good expression that, thanks to one of my British followers for sending it along,) 

Whatever the issues around the implementation of a flat tax it is infinitely preferable to the 'fat tax' system we currently have in our democracies. I believe that politicians oppose it because it puts a cap on what they can spend while the accounting industry is opposed because it will pretty much make them irrelevant at tax time.

If every working person, profitable corporation, NGO, charity, activist group and anyone or anything else that has income was taxed at the same basic percentage with no, and I mean no, deductions – government would have more money than even politicians would know what to do with and we would all pay less of our income in taxes. We wouldn't need all those other taxes and fees to pay for this mismanagement of government,

Here’s a simple reality that politicians and those who scream tax the rich have never quite grasped. Wal-Mart didn’t get to be what it is by charging excessive prices for what it sells, it makes huge profits by trying to charge as little as possible but get as many as possible to purchase from them.

Apply that thinking to taxation. If we lowered taxes but made everyone pay the same percentage, there would be more willing compliance, less opportunity to lower the assessed tax rate to the absurd levels some billionaires now pay and the national debt of most countries could be retired in less than twenty years.

Even better, the government would have a specific amount of tax income that couldn't be adjusted, increased or amended. They get x per cent of our total income and that folks is it! Of course, it would require political leaders with some integrity and we may be a while waiting for that to happen.  But if they ever did show up, one of the first things required would be to rewrite the law banning all taxes except income tax. It's just too easy for government now. When they screw up, the simply raise taxes or create new ones. Some governments aren't even aware of how much their citizens are taxed. It is a blind, mindless addiction by self-serving special interest both within government and those who feed at the table.

I know, I know….you're still hung up on the idea that you can’t tax charities because they need that tax deduction to raise funds. Why?

Why is it the taxpayer’s responsibility to help charities raise money by kicking in a percentage of the donation in the form of a tax deduction to someone else? Why should tax payers be hoofing the bill for those expensive fund raising dinners so many attend and then write off the cost as a donation on their taxes. If a charity can’t raise money because people want to voluntarily donate, that shouldn’t suddenly make taxpayers responsible. It’s that kind of fuzzy thinking that got us into this mess in the first place.

Taxpayers are not a money tree nor are we the geese that have golden eggs popping out of our asses every April for the enjoyment of government and all of those other special folks who currently live off our largesse. We are people who work hard to earn a living to provide for our families and to build successful lives.

Political parties benefit even more with higher tax deductions for donations than even charities receive. Why? If the only way you can raise enough money for television commercials to lie to the electorate is by getting the taxpayer to fund the donations of others, we have more than just a problem here.

It was only three hundred years ago that a couple of kings got a little carried away with taxation. In France, the king lost his head over it….literally….once the taxpayers had decided they had pretty much had enough. While the British monarch lost a nation. It’s time politicians, and the rest who benefit from what they have convinced government to take from us, got this simple message.

Christian or not, we’re willing to take Christ’s suggestion and pay our fair share but we are neither as forgiving nor as patient as he was. We aren’t so civilized and meek these days that we can’t start throwing tea into the Boston Harbour again and I’m pretty sure someone can dig out how those old plans on how to build a guillotine.

History has taught us that when taxes become unfair and spiral out of control, something is going to get cut and quite honestly, wouldn't it be easier, not to mention safer, to clean up the current tax system than to lose your head over the status quo? Just ask Louis XVII. I'm sure he'll give you his best 20/20 hindsight advice on the issue.

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