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The Tax Bandits
By The Cynic
[email protected]

Every four years your candidates for political offices take the time to snuggle up with you and talk to you about your participation in government. No, I am not talking about going out and voting, I'm talking about your amount due to the government for services rendered. In other words, your taxes.

No matter what they tell you, politicians do not view taxes as a matter of obligation. They do not view them as a matter of fairness. To a pol, taxes are the revenue they need to establish programs and entitlements to assist them in winning their next bid for office. Their concept of taxation is to extract the most revenue with the least amount of pain and whining.

Taxes come in all shapes and sizes. From the immoral (estate taxes) to the absurd (Universal Connectivity charges on your phone bill) to the hidden (gasoline, alcohol, tobacco), the taxes are in place to hit you where you won't notice or mind them. When your parents pass and leave you with an estate worth, say $140,000, you may be bothered that 30% of that will go to the federal government, but this is a stressful time for you and being pissed off about it is not a top priority for you. It also only happens once in your life. The $2.95 on your phone bill for Internet service for Indian reservations doesn't phase you in the scheme of an $85 phone bill. You don't even know how much you pay you in hidden taxes as they are just factored into the selling price of these items.

While these types of taxes generate quite a bit of revenue for our government, there is not enough money to establish the pork programs for each of our 537 elected officials. To raise this type of booty, they needed something more clever, something more sinister. Something that is so inherently immoral and deceitful, yet so decidedly brilliant that the citizens will have no idea what hit them. I am talking about federal withholding taxes.

Most Americans believe it to be their civic duty to contribute taxes, however I am amazed by the fact that they are absolutely ignorant when it comes to what they pay in taxes. These folks aren't concerned with what they actually earn, they focus on what they get take home, and this is where the trickery comes in.

Imagine if you will, that every spring your friends at the IRS send you a bill for $8500. Would you pay it or would you question it? Would you feel satisfied that you are getting $8500 worth of services from your government? Would you reelect your Congressman?

This is why they take out your taxes in weekly increments. The befuddled masses would be outraged to receive such an obscenely high bill from their government. So they take it out, bit by bit, dollar by dollar, week by week as to minimize the outrage. The people adjust their lifestyles not to their earnings, but to their net pay. This is how they begin to fool you, but it doesn't stop here.

There is still a chance that you may look at your W2s at the end of the year and be outraged at the amount of tax taken. They can't allow this type of a loophole for outrage. So now on to phase two of the scam: Your write-offs.

Write-offs are in place to generate tax refunds. Everyone gets at least one write-off, it's called a personal deduction. My question is: Why not raise the minimum taxable limit amount by the $4200 that they allow as a personal deduction? Because that would mean many wouldn't get a tax refund. If you don't get a tax refund, then you may look at your total tax due and become outraged. If you get outraged, then your elected officials can't fund that ever so important program to study the mating habits of turkey vultures. If they can't fund their pet projects and return some money to your district, they don't get reelected. Reelection is the only thing that matters to your elected officials.

It's a bait and switch. They can't have you thinking about what you pay, so they divert your attention by getting you to worry about how much you are getting back. This is criminally genius. This keeps you quiet so they can go on running the government without all those pesky citizens getting in the way.

If you still don't believe that this is a scam, I wish you to answer the following questions, without cheating, and tell me which figure comes to mind quicker:

What was your federal tax refund from last year?

What was your total federal tax due last year?

Guess what? The tax bandits got you.

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© The Cynic, 2000


See today's other columns:
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The Cynic makes a bold prediction in California Dreaming & the Electoral College; Why Bush May End Up Winning California
Brent Barksdale warns us when the polls drop, so will the bombs

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Our editor Brent Barksdale takes Drudge to task on his new book, The Drudge Manifesto.

 

View expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Political USA.


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