Income Taxes Are Due

The final day to submit Federal Income taxes in the U.S. has passed.  But wait!  Many Americans need not worry, for in this age of fewer and fewer people required to pay any income tax at all (the "fleece the rich" left wing mentality has excused "the poor" and many others from any responsibility to pay income taxes). People here are taxed based on their income. If you don't work or your wage receipts are low you are excused and in most cases even given a check to "help you" because you don't pay taxes. The relative tax burdens borne by different income groups changes over time, due both to economic conditions and the constantly shifting provisions of tax law. But it used to be that most Americans, even the poor, were required to pay something, sometimes just a few dollars, in order to make them aware that government spending exists because citizens pay taxes. When all citizens pay taxes politicians have all eyes watching how the revenue from taxes is spent.

In a PEW research last year 64% of Americans say they thought that they paid "about the right amount" in income taxes. I suspect the 54% that said that, pay little or no income taxes at all. In America the wealthy are the ones who pay most of the income taxes in this country, this despite the dishonest portrayal of the wealth by the Democratic party leftist and by the socialists who love to spend money as long as its other people's money. In 2014 for example, people with incomes above $250,000 per year paid just over half (51.6%) of all individual income taxes collected, though they accounted for only 2.7% of all returns filed. It makes a lie of the Obama types who claim the rich don't pay enough.

On the other hand, the ones who scream "unfair" the most are paying little taxes at all. In 2014, people with incomes of less than $50,000 accounted for 62.3% of all individual income tax returns filed, but they paid just 5.7% of total taxes collected. Here's what makes those of us who pay taxes upset. The U.S. tax system as a whole is progressive. The top 0.1% of families pay the equivalent of 39.2%  of all income taxes and the bottom 20% of the population  have negative tax rates (that is, they get more money back from the government than they pay in taxes).  That is not a fair taxation system because it punishes those who produce wealth and rewards those who do not.

Everyone in the U.S. seems dissatisfied to some degree with the income tax. Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction today because they are arbitrary and unequally applied. Yet, there never is the political will to abolish it for other more equal and understandable forms of taxation. The wealthy are cheated in the income tax assessment, but the wealthy cheat other Americans in low rates for other kinds of things (dividend and capital gains for example) on which Americans pay taxes.  Maybe we should all just spend what we have before they take it in taxes.