The IRS and Governmentlly Enforced Robbery

So April 15th has come and gone once again; the most disliked American ritual - tax day, has passed.

This morning I listened to a man brag about his keen understanding of the tax system and how that knowledge enabled him to keep from paying any taxes this year. "Oh, really," I responded, "didn't you pay the government about $30,000 in taxes over the course of the year?" he was visibly shaken by my abrupt declaration of the truth and admitted that he had indeed paid about a third of his income to the government.

That got me thinking. Our government figured out long ago that if you automatically have money taken out of your paycheck and put into a savings account every week you aren't likely to miss that skimmed money. If you have never held it in your hands it seems as if it doesn't exist. So they devised a system where they take your money before you see it and put it into their bank account, hoping that we won't protest; and for the most-part, we don't.

But what if you got to keep all of your money every week, and at the end of the year the government said you had to write them a check for $30,000 (or roughly a third of your annual income)? My guess is that people would scream, riot and do whatever they could to get out of giving their money to the crookedest charity in the US, the US government.

So why are we so passive about allowing our hard earned money to be snatched from us every week? Do we truly believe that we cannot fight city hall? Probably. And unless there were a nationwide boycott against the IRS in which nearly every citizen participated, nothing much would change.

So what's a person to do besides blog about their angst? Well one thing is to learn about where your money is going, and to begin participating in the process of deciding what the government uses it for.

Taxes are just a way to socialize our society. Like Robin Hood, the government takes from the employed and gives to the bureaucrats. About 70% of your hard earned tax dollar goes to pay someone else's salary and administrative costs that go along with their government appointed job. Another 15% goes to provide homes and money for the unemployed and the rest goes to funding ridiculous pseudo-researchers and their pet projects.

Every time you vote yes on a ballot issue that says it will cost money to provide for that service you are willingly allowing the government to take more out of your paycheck. Why not just keep your money and decide for yourself which charities to support? Instead of creating countless administrative agencies to decide how the remainder of the money will be spent. Why doesn't the government give us a list of charities we can give to and allow us to bypass the middleman? I guarantee that the money would go further to help those in need and we the contributor would feel a deeper sense of connection to out American neighbors.

Even if the IRS forcibly required us to donate 10-15% of our income to our chosen charities, not only would the money be better invested but we would still end up with more than we have now. We could provide better for our own family. The economy would flourish, and we would feel more in control of our personal destiny.

I understand that taxes are already such an integrated part of our society that changing the system is only a pipe dream. But now that I have given all of my money to the government, dreaming is the only pastime I can afford.