I hear so many people talk *excitedly* about getting tax refunds. They look FORWARD to tax day, because their perception is they GET money — somehow totally missing that it’s their money that they loaned to the government at 0% interest.

If we stop withholding, then everyone would have to pay, and no one would get a refund, so no one would be so damn happy about April 15th.

I bet a ton of people would find themselves at risk of bouncing a check to the IRS, and maybe that would stir up some animosity. (Although, I can totally see some people arguing that it’s not fair the government left it up to them to save money.)

After all, this only creates the illusion of “skin in the game.” They’re given money — other people’s money — and agree to give most or all of it back. That’s not ownership. That’s a game.

Receiving and then simply handing back someone else’s money is not “paying taxes,” nor do I belive it would create that sense of ownership. What would? Perhaps coupling this All Tax idea with some potential consequences or rewards, some “threat” of expense. I’m not sure exactly how that would work out, but that makes it a lot more than a game.

This isn’t a matter of raising revenues. It’s a matter of re-establishing a mindset.

Just knowing that you are now in a tax bracket is a reminder that it’s YOUR money to begin with, money the government subsequently takes away.

It would be easier to compute the net effect of the exchange in advance and apply that. Instead, the money is given to the individual, thereby assuring that everyone is in a 10% tax bracket.

The premise is that with more people feeling like they are paying a tax (which they are), you’d have a little more scrutiny on the spending side, and less groundswell to “soak” taxpayers.

If everyone pays taxes, then everyone “owns” Leviathan instead of being “owned” by it.

Ideas?

There’s a review out there of William Greider’s book on David Stockman (the Reagan apostate) that begins with these two quotes that I still like to pull out from time to time:

The most important function of the federal government is mailing checks to citizens–Social Security checks to the elderly, pension checks to retired soldiers and civil servants, reimbursement checks for hospitals and doctors who provide medical care for the aged and the poor, welfare checks for the dependent, veterans checks to pensioners.
-William Greider, The Education of David Stockman

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
-Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (1742-1813)

How do you get them not to riot? Easy. They are paying taxes out of a larger sum of money they never would have seen anyway. In every single case, the math works out to their net benefit. What’s to complain? A little bit of hassle? Having to actually calculate and file?

Maybe this is an impetus for simplifying the code anyway…

1. Where does the $5K that goes to all these families come from?

2. Ditto Foxfier (kind of) – how do you get this group that has never paid taxes to not riot?

I think it’s a good idea. No, you’re not evil. If my grad school stipend gets taxes taken out (and it does), then I can’t understand how other people can get away with not paying.