Tax Time Looms...

And here are my thoughts:

Taxpayers in the top 20% of the population by income – and those people account for 52.4% of the income earned in this country – pay 82.5% of the taxes. Those in the next 20% pay 14.3% of the taxes while earning 20.7% of the income; the next 20% pay 5.2% of the taxes while earning 14.2% of the income; the next 20% pay 0.3% of the taxes, and 9.2% of the income; and the bottom 20% pay minus 2.3% of the taxes (in other words, they got money without ever paying in the first place) while earning 4.2% of the income. Dividing the numbers up in a slightly different way, the bottom half of income tax payers pay only 3.3% of the income tax paid.

IRS statistics for 2006 show that 45.6 million tax filers – 1/3 of all filers – have NO tax liability after taking their credits and deductions. (This is a 57% increase since 2000 - and the concern is that there has been a similar increase since 2006, not yet reported.)

How invested are these non-tax-payers in making sure their government is accountable? Is it desirable, in a representative form of government like our Republic, to have so many American voters disconnected from the cost of government? While they are voting for people who are going to be using our tax system to fund social policy?

People who pay no taxes but are nevertheless beneficiaries of government handouts are less likely to include ‘careful oversight of government’ as one of their voting mandates. We are rapidly approaching the point where the people who pay for government will have no say in it. And after the non-payers vote themselves more and more government handouts, at some point the 'payers' won't be able to manage the burden - and then what?

It doesn't inspire confidence as we dig, once again, deep into our checkbook to pay our tax bill this year. Didn't we, at one point in our revered history, revolt against taxation without representation?