Andy on the Issue of Taxes

What’s the cost of being an American? We know first-hand that it’s the amount of money collected from our salaries and added to our purchases. We know it’s also added at the pump and in heating our homes. We see it in fees for fishing on a lazy day or biking down a winding trail. In it’s worst incarnation, it lurks in the homes of the dying and deceased, curious to see if a loved one has passed with too much money. But, it wasn’t always this way. There was a time when the cost of being an American was kept to a minimum, our government had to live within its very limited means. There was a time when no American was required to remit half of his income to be governed. There was a time when being an American carried an assurance that a workers claim to his or her earnings was greater than the claims of the government. That threshold has been broken. It is time for action to be taken.

 

The taxing issue goes far beyond just wanting to cut taxes. The reality is that the Federal government grabs its monies a little at a time throughout our entire lives and we don't even realize the extent of their thievery. You've got sales taxes, property taxes, income taxes, payroll taxes, inheritance taxes, gasoline taxes, sin taxes, and a multitude of others, not even trying to separate out fees that are more correctly labeled taxes. And, just when you think you’ve had enough, our tax system creates, for the individual and for the business, a compliance cost that further erodes our economic well-being.

 

Payroll and income taxes eat up nearly 25% of the average workers pay. Of course, the majority of employees never see the effect of the payroll tax, a part of their wage they never see. On the other hand, every business owner is well aware of the payroll cost, and factors those numbers into employment decisions. The American worker cannot continue allowing the government to blind them to the true cost of their employment. That's why I am a proponent of the FairTax. The actual bill, a mere 131 pages, intends to replace thousands of pages of the current tax code. Its self-proclaimed goal is “To promote freedom, fairness, and economic opportunity by repealing the income tax and other taxes, abolishing the Internal Revenue Service and enacting a national sales tax to be administered primarily by the States.” You can find the text of the bill by clicking here.

 

Those other taxes that will be eliminated? We’re talking about payroll taxes, estate taxes, and gift taxes.

Eliminating the income and payroll taxes will free up businesses to get about doing their business. They’ll spend less time and money attempting to comply with regulations that even the IRS misinterprets. Abolishing the estate and gift taxes goes to the essence of what it means to be an American. Taxing previously taxed monies without additional economic activity is not an American value. Our forefathers went to war over such principles. It's a punishment for folks who have done well, lived and built their own American dream, and then died with what the government says is too much money. You try taking a twenty off a corpse, see what happens, but when the Federal government does it, it's just a way of life.

 

There are other taxes we pay that are not included in the FairTax legislation, many of them just money grabs. Consistent with my overall platform, reducing the Federal government's presence in our lives, I believe that any gasoline tax should be submitted to the state of origin, not to the Federal coffers. There isn't any reason, other than to allow Washington to take a cut and to redistribute the monies to other more needy states, for the Federal government to collect those dollars. My goal would be to eliminate the decreasing return of taxes you pay (the Federal government takes a cut without doing anything to preserve the roads.) A substantial benefit would be the elimination of the blackmail capability of the Federal government on the States. You've heard it before, if you don't do something (ie. lower the speed limit, lower the OWI standards, make seatbelt enforcement a primary objective, and many more to come) then your Federal highway dollars will be withheld. Every time Washington wants to force the states to do something, they threaten to withhold the highway funds. Those decisions need to be made without Federal intervention. Making the gasoline tax a local tax gets the Federal government out of the way, but it also prevents local governments from scapegoating the Federal government when it comes to state laws.

 

Our state now sits in the 48^th position when it comes to receiving federal spending http://www.census.gov/prod/2009pubs/cffr-08.pdf That’s after ranking 47^th for 2006 http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/cffr-06.pdf, Page 25.) The Federal government has become a bloated pig. Not only is it bloated with our tax dollars, but also the promises of generations yet to be born, and we are not getting our money’s worth. It's not to late to correct the situation. Abraham Lincoln once expressed confidence that "while the people retain their virtue and their vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly can seriously injure the government in the short space of four years." Reagan commented that Lincoln might have hedged on that statement if he were able to see the effects of the Carter administration. We are at the same point, here and now.