Wednesday, May 2, 2001
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Wednesday, May 2, 2001 |
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Start working for yourself tomorrow By DAVE HAMRICK Tomorrow, May 3, is the day when you stop working for the government and start working for yourself, according to the national Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that studies such things. Actually, that's true only if you're average. If your income is above average, you pay a higher percentage of that income in taxes, and therefore you'll still be engaged in slave labor for a few more days. Then again, May 3 is a national figure, and actually Georgians get a bit of a break. Our freedom day was actually Saturday; that is, those of us who are average. I'm sure some folks consider a concept like Tax Freedom Day kind of silly. After all, we don't really work until April 28 for the government and then start working for ourselves. And if you look at your paycheck and add up the taxes, the numbers don't even work. Taxes are a lot lower than groups like the Tax Foundation claim. But that sort of thinking just underscores the Tax Foundation's point. People don't know how much they're paying in taxes, because so many taxes are hidden from us. Go to www.taxfoundation.org and you'll see just how devious our political leaders can be when it comes to hiding taxes from us. For instance, there's a list of how many days a year you have to work in order to pay several categories of taxes, some of which show up on your pay stub and many of which do not. Of the 123 days the average American worked to pay taxes last year, only 60 of those were for personal income taxes, both state and federal. Social Security, Medicare et. al. take up 29 days, and the rest of the tax burden comes from sales and excise taxes 16 days; property taxes 10 days; corporate income taxes 12 days; other business taxes three days; all other taxes two days. Now, some of you deep thinkers out there have already latched onto one inconsistency in this theory, you think. "I don't own a corporation, don't pay corporate income taxes, so I gain 12 days," you're thinking. Sorry to burst your bubble, but corporations do not pay taxes they merely act as collection agencies to take them from you and me in the form of higher prices for the goods and services we buy and lower wages from the corporations we work for. I've heard estimates that about 40 percent of the price of an automobile is taxes. Never checked it out, but I wouldn't be surprised. What all of this does is simply to illustrate that taxes are too high not a little bit too high, but way, way too high. Get the boot of government off the necks of this country and its people and there's no telling what we might be able to accomplish. That's why the president's tax cut proposals are so important. They're too little, but at least they're a start toward restoring some semblance of balance. Which brings me to another point. An otherwise very intelligent gentleman informed me the other day that he agrees that taxes need to come down, but insists that we pay off the national debt first. A. If we lower taxes enough to stimulate the economy, the resulting growth will increase tax revenues and we can pay off the debt faster. B. Do you really believe that the government will pay off the debt if we don't reduce taxes? If so, please send me $1,000 and I'll send you a prayer cloth, a cure for cancer and three magic beans. One other interesting piece of information from the Tax Foundation, for those who think the Bush tax cut proposal is too large. If Congress somehow reverses itself and accepts Bush's entire tax cut proposal, ten years from now we will still be working for the government later in the year than we are now. The Tax Foundation's figures show that Tax Freedom Day will move from May 3 to May 10 over the next ten years, even with the proposed cuts. How can that be, you say? Simple. It's the result of the cruelest, most inhumane system we have in this country, the graduated income tax. If all goes well, we will achieve more and earn more money, and we will be punished for it with larger taxes.
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