Intaxication: A Penny Saved is a Government Oversight

Tax day has come and gone for us all. Unless you have been hiding under a rock, you heard about the tax day tea parties that were held around the nation.

On the Fourth of July, 1776, America declared ourselves liberated from unfair British taxation. On the Fifth of July, 1776, we then started our own system of taxation. I am, of course, embellishing on the actual date, but for the most part we declared freedom from British rule because of taxation without representation. In the almost 233 years of American sovereignty, our system of taxation has largely been left unchecked and has escalated out of control. Today, it's hard to believe that America was founded to avoid high taxation.

We all dislike taxation. However, we have a responsibility to pay some taxes in order to maintain essential government services (national defense, social security, schools, trash collection, maintenance of roads, etc.). However there are some inherent problems with the American tax system as it stands.

First off, our tax system is progressive. The more money you make, the more in taxes you pay. This stems from the economic argument that individuals with less money value a dollar more than others with more moeny. But as my wife so eloquently puts it (and I'm paraphrasing here), 'The world will try to take that dollar away with everything it has, but it's still your dollar and you should fight to keep it that way'. (Warning: Tangent Rant Ahead) So I understand that a person with $10,000 has less than someone with $100,000; but to me, that's not a valid reason to take the $1 and give it to the person with $10,000. Both individuals made decisions on how to live their lives and subsequently have reaped their rewards. Government should not have a role in redistributing wealth in the land of opportunity; if you want to make more money, get a good education and/or get a better job.

A better taxation system would be one where tax payers get to chose how much they want to pay in taxes. This is the liberatarian argument of a national sales tax. This sales tax is implemented in lieu of a personal income tax and other forms of taxation. This way, people pay taxes based on how much goods they consume rather than how much money they make. It's also a flat tax so everyone is impacted the same (the only distinction between rich and poor here is the wealthy's ability to consume more goods). And for those of you who worry about this tax being regressive in nature (affecting the poor more than others), the liberatarian taxation model exempts the poor from paying all or part of the national sales tax. This tax system is more equitable and helps to keep the government out of our paychecks.

We also pay too much in taxes and are taxed from too many levels. I would go as far to say that there are very few things in America that are actually tax-exempt. We pay different taxes on almost everything and pay taxes to multiple levels of government (city/town, county, state, federal). Escaping taxes is almost impossible. Tax law is written in such a confusing manner that no one understands it, and the ones that do understand it know enough about it to find the right loopholes to avoid paying taxes.

And I think that's the main reason there were widespread national protests on tax day; the current tax system is grossly unfair. But CNN didn't want you to think that. CNN wanted you to think that it was a conservative protest against President Obama. These protests have been going on for years now, but this was the first year that the protests received media attention and promotion.

One reader commented (online) that I should watch more CNN to balance me out. Why would I do that after the sickening "story" CNN aired on the tax-day protests? I was able to watch a video of what CNN didn't air thanks to some protestors who had their camera-phones handy. One protestor confronted CNN reporter, Susan Roesgen, about her unfair portrayal of the Chicago tea-party. She was correct when she accused Roesgen of unfairly selected a member of the protest who obviously held an extreme viewpoint of the Obama Administration. She informed Roesgen (1) the protest was non-partisan in nature, (2) demonstrated against unfair taxation, and (3) Roesgen could have picked any normal member of the rally to get those points.

Roesgen tried to get the woman to admit that the protest was made popular through promotions by Fox News, but the woman retorted that the information was available to everyone; not just through one particular medium. And who cares if Fox News provided promotion and coverage of the event? Who cares what Rush Limbaugh says? Limbaugh and Fox News are just two mediums of thousands for getting information. I don't even watch Fox News at all. I get my information from many different sources; primarily from reading the newspaper or online editions. Just because my opinions come more from the right doesn't mean I subscribe exclusively to the thoughts and sentiment of Limbaugh and Fox News.

I, like most Americans, am smart enough to form my own opinions from information received from any source; whether it is biased left or right. So will I be watching CNN to balance out my opinion after these tax-day shenanigans? Absolutely not. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

And Roesgen should have known that we are all smart enough to not be steered by Fox News and Limbaugh. Now she does. We are smart enough to be free thinkers and actually act in our own best interests. The only agenda behind the tax protests was the agenda for lower taxes. There will always be kooks that come out with their own agenda and piggy-back off the crowd. How many times has there been an Iraq War protest that a kook in there with their own agenda? Answer: All the time. Is that indicative of that particular protest as a whole? No.

So kudos to the tax protestors that exercised their right to assemble peacefully to ask the government for redress (still remember that one in the Bill or Rights?). It's your patriotic right.