Well, not really. But I do have the unfortunate luck of having been born on a day that isn’t traditionally Tax Day, but turns into Tax Day when April 15th falls on a Saturday. It probably gave my parents no end to delight about me being their second “favorite little dependent.” Luckily, I took care of my taxes months ago. But should I have even bothered with taxes? We seem to forget to ask the basic questions. Usually things start out as an assumption and, with time and repetition, become “Truth.” If you tell yourself something long enough, over and over again it will become your individual Truth. Even if it started out as a lie. This is the case with taxes.
Now I’m not going to go into a long diatribe about how the Sixteenth Amendment wasn’t properly ratified, whether it grants the power to tax individual incomes, or about the shady banking interests who set up our tax system. These things and more are covered succintly and entertainingly by this summer’s feel-good movie event America: From Freedom to Fascism (as originally mentioned on April 4th in my post, Screwing Up The MATRIX). No, I will choose to go into a different long diatribe.
The way I look at it is simple — THE GOVERNMENT DIDN’T BUST ITS HUMP AT MY JOB, SO IT’S NOT THE GOVERNMENT’S DAMN MONEY! That’s a pretty straight-forward belief. Unfortunately, it hasn’t caused the IRS to suddenly and magically cease existing. At least, not yet. When asked if the government deserves a part of the spoils for a typical working stiff’s Monday pay, many people will chuckle, gently say “No,” and wonder why this heretic is questioning the laws of nature, or at least the laws of the good ol’ US of A. But think about it — after a couple days off relaxing, isn’t it a struggle to give it your best at work? And if you’ve worked exceptionally hard at your job, who deserves it more than you do?
But in every crowd there’s somebody doubting you and trying to either qualify or rationalize why we need taxes more than anything else. I love people who try to argue their point, even when they are flat out wrong. The most vocal of these groups include pragmatists and humanitarians. The pragmatists continually ask who will pay for the roads, the military and their favorite pet project. They are pragmatists for a reason. What that reason is is beyond me, but they tend to deny even the possibility that there are other ways to solve problems other than the ones that have already been tried and those that are currently being utilized. The humanitarians are full of principle and have no fear of having a grandiose outside of the box solution. They want to end hunger, Parkinson’s, the use of fossil fuels, whatever. Of course, both groups are similar in that their solutions always involve throwing money at the problem. And for that, both groups need the government to collect lots and lots of taxes.
As a response to this common aspect of both of these groups, we need to find solutions that don’t involve the extortion of huge sums of money from individuals for totally unrelated purposes. One way of doing this is to tie usage to expenditure. You use the road, you pay a toll. You use a park, you pay an admission fee. You pollute a city’s water supply, you pay for the clean-up. Kind of easy, and it can all be done without an annual Tax Day. And with the money that is saved from having a drastically scaled-back Internal Revenue Service (if we need one at all), people would be free to spend their hard-earned money on whatever they want. They could even throw a bone to the humanitarians out there and give it to one of their favorite charitable organizations. As an aside, two that I’ve given generously of time and money in the past have included the National Motorists Association Foundation and the March of Dimes Walk America (just in case anyone got lucky with their tax refund).
But even if we didn’t deserve to keep the money, we’ve got to wonder what it’s being used for. The IRS itself costs about $10 billion dollars per year to operate. Then, there’s the drain created by compliance with the IRS. The IRS even puts your personal and private data at risk. Some people accuse those who suggest ending the IRS of being crazy, but you have to ask yourself at what point it becomes crazy to not do something about it. At least I know that my taxes are going to pay Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s salary. And as an ardent champion of the taxpayer, he is well worth every dollar of it.
So what should be done about this? Well, you could resist paying taxes. And with the US government’s firm committment to “liberate” every oil producing country in the world, you could even participate in that highly-specialized field of tax resistance known as war tax resistance. Naw! This site would never encourage anyone to do anything remotely illegal. Anyway, my employer did the government’s bidding by conveniently taking Uncle Sam’s share out before giving me my paycheck. Besides one person out there not paying his or her taxes would just get mowed down. A more appropriate first step may simply be to become educated and become an advocate for taxpayers and a fighter against government waste. Study, spread the word, blog about tax resistance, vote and voice your concerns directly to your elected representative. And when the message has reached enough of a saturation and acceptance in the general populace, we can all resist together. Without getting mowed down, of course.
But was it worth bothering with taxes this year? Hell yeah! And in the end, I did it for the best reason of them all — TO GET MY MONEY BACK! Now I guess I can have a truly Happy Birthday after all.
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