My Two Cents - "The other April Fool's Day"

2/9/2007

For generations now, April 1st has been dubbed 'April Fools Day'. It is a day where we deceive and play tricks on each other. Much time and energy are spent planning the practical jokes played on that day. Even more time will be spent cherishing the results of those shenanigans. My contention is that there is a day in April with even more deception and trickery than the first though. It is the day when we settle up with Uncle Sam and sacrifice the goodly portion of another year's revenues at the altar of bloated government.

Living in Pennsylvania, I have seen and heard almost everything with regard to taxes. Currently, we have a battle royal going on in the State Legislature over what will be done with the windfall of money that will be arriving in the form of gambling receipts. Money we are assured will soon arrive to save us from even higher property taxes. In case you didn't see the sarcasm dripping from that last remark, we are also told that to 'pay' for our reduction in property taxes we will have to subjugate ourselves to even higher Earned Income Taxes along with an array of other taxes, fees and levies. Possible candidates are the doubling of vehicle registration fees and driver's license fees.

Long ago I arrived at the undeniable conclusion that taxes never go down. They are merely moved from our focus to another place where they aren't noticed nearly so much. The government, to its credit, has studied other social systems and learned how to squeeze the most money without causing upheaval. A fine example of this is the Federal withholding on your paycheck each week. If we were forced to actually write a check for the full amount at the end of the year, payments would have stopped long ago. For this very reason, the taxes are taken out of your check before you even see the money. This follows the famous psychological mantra that you will not miss what you never had. This method of taxation was sold to the public as a convenience, but was never meant to be convenient to anyone except the recipients of the tax payments.

Recently, the crescendo of new tax proposals has been deafening. Let me sum up a few of the more ridiculous ones I've heard in the past few weeks:

"War on Terrorism Tax" - Proposed by Senator Joe Lieberman, D-CT

Senator Lieberman is proposing a tax to help defray the costs of the War on Terrorism. Regardless of your position on this particular issue, I think we can all agree that our already high levels of taxation were intended to cover national defense. I wrote Senator Lieberman a letter spelling out that point, also pointing out that it was government's responsibility to live with its means, not to grow in a wanton fashion then adjust the tax rates to match its voracious appetite for spending. I was afraid that the good Senator had forgotten that.

Increases in Sales Tax - Proposed by various governors, including Edward Rendell here in Pennsylvania

The sales tax is another psychologically important means of taxation because the money is collected a little at a time, and therefore is under the radar of most folks. Here in the Keystone state Mr. Rendell is proposing raising the sales tax by 16%. Based on my own calculations this increase, if it passes, will cost my family approximately $367/year. I wrote Mr. Rendell a letter very similar to the one I sent to Mr. Lieberman, assuming they both suffer from the same amnesia with regard to the government's fiscal responsibility.

WPT (Windfall Profits Taxes) on oil companies - Proposed by almost everyone in office to 'punish' oil companies for making money

Another colossal failure in the making, this tax will be passed on to consumers much in the same way as almost every corporate tax gimmick. This will punish consumers not oil companies and is part of the multi-pronged approach for ensuring (despite all the lip service to the contrary) that we never become energy independent.

I guess this is how we usher in the new age of runaway government. The old adage says something about going to the well once too often. I cannot think of a more applicable example of that. The average American is taxed, levied, surcharged and tolled to death. Therefore, I am going to make a motion to the keepers of the US holiday calendar that April Fool's Day be moved to April 15th.

Andy Sutton holds a MBA with Honors in Economics from Moravian College and is a member of Omicron Delta Epsilon International Honor Society in Economics. This article and other information is located at http://www.my2centsonline.com Please feel free to distribute, copy or otherwise disseminate this information.