Tax Whom?

My blood boils when I hear the disingenuous, phony prattle back and forth between people who want to tax the "rich" more and those who don't. The wealthy in this country have become the whipping boy for all taxes. When the federal government cries about not enough revenue to handle the wasteful spending on entitlements it pays out, there is always a suggestion that the problem with low taxation revenues is that wealthy payers are getting off too easily.

Well, they may or may not. It is a subjective question. But they do pay the highest percentage of taxes in the U.S. (the richest 1% of the U.S. population pays 35% of all taxes collected!) , and their total tax contributions dwarfs the other groups. Whether we should tax them further because "they can afford it" is not the key question about taxation here. What is the real and unstated issue (because politicians lose votes if they attempt to tax ordinary people) should be is "Why do 50% of Americans pay no income tax (they are exempted from it) and why do so many "poor" people who work and have an income, not only not pay any taxes but have a positive flow of taxes coem to them (the government gives them a host of checks when they file for taxation, so that they actually receive revenue refunds rather than paying taxes).

More people here, no all people here, who have an income should pay some income tax every year. Just somthing, to get their attention in their country. It doesn't have to be a lot of taxes, but if one lives here and has an income he or she owes society something for the freebies it provides them.The lost revenue from tax exemptions and positive tax flow filing is killing this economy, all because our politicians fear losing their elective office if they stop the entitlement, non tax game. And each year our Congress excuses more and more people form the taxes they should be paying.

What best illustrates this, and what has my blood boiling today, subject is a report from the U.S. Treasury today. It said that nearly 50,000 prison inmates claimed more than $130 million in tax refunds this year without providing any wage information to the IRS. This prison inmate filing is done because any person with no or too little income people in this country will receive money from the government when filling an income tax refund. Even the jails are on to the scam that is taxation in this country. Sad to say, most of the inmates involved, probably have not violated any law and probably will receive thousands of dollars in "refunds' simply for filing and saying they are "poor". Is this not the canary in the mine..the alert that our tax system is not bad because "rich people pay too little in taxes"? Instead, it's bad because too many wage earners do not pay any taxes at all and additionally reap financial benefits for not doing so.

So today a person in prison has no income, therefore he pays no income tax, but gets a refund check. Am I missing something here???? Not really. It's the age of entitlement here, where crying "I am poor" really means "I am not going to be responsible for myself, so give me money and I will continue to vote for you "Taxes used to be a means to collect money to run the government. But now they are nothing more than another vehicle to redistribute wealth in order for incumbant politicans to more easily win elections.. Hence, our prisoners don't pay any taxes and yet are entitled to a tax refund. But this prisoner question is just a bell of alert to the wider problems of non taxation in the U.S.

The poor and alleged poor will have absolutely no vested interest in this country if they do not pay taxes to support it. As of now, taxpayers with $48,000 of income may qualify for some EIC (EIC is a idiotic program that will pay for all the income tax a filer below that income may owe and provided thousands of dollars of "refund" money checks for the filer) and be completely excused from all federal income taxes. And these are the working poor? No wonder there is a revenue shortage in the U.S. How can a nation survive with only half its members contributing money to pay for it?