Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.
~Geoffrey Chaucer, "Canterbury Tales"It is finally spring, and even though young men's minds are all on thoughts of love, older wiser heads are preparing to render under Caesar that which is Caesar's.
And many wonder why we bother to rend to Caesar in the first place, why don't we just keep our hard earned pecuniary rewards?
Well, the honest answer is that Government is not a self supporting industry. Since we expect certain benefits from our government, we in exchange must find a way to fund them.
Although it would be fair if the national debt were to be divided amongst all of us equally, and everyone just payed their share, those on either end of the financial spectrum disagree.
Those with great wealth and power (and thus often those deciding) agreed in the past to set up the Internal Revenue Service to collect funds, and decided an income tax was fairest on most people, but then the tax code was written in such a way as not to punish those of wealth for acquiring it, and the rich got tax breaks.
Those on the other end of the spectrum often cannot afford to pay their fair share, so they are readily agreeable to changes in tax code that shift the main burden to the middle class, as that allows the poorest to participate in society without having as heavy a burden to bear.
Unfortunately, as debts rise, there are more and more on the bottom end that cannot pay their share, while those on the upper end find more and more ways to opt out of paying their share, leaving an increasingly narrow middle class to pay an increasing percentage of the debts of the other two classes, which also tends to push those in the middle further towards the bottom of the scale.
Reform is needed, and yet, replacing the current system with a fairer one could possibly cause harsher conditions for those on the bottom end during transition, at least until something fairer was actually fully in place.
Another real danger to consider in taxation reform, is that one would have to enact the new before repealing the old, so as to fund the transition. This could lead to the old not being repealed, and having the two systems coexist, since government is lax in removing taxes. Nothing is as permanent as a temporary tax, as the current income tax system shows, it was originally intended as nothing more than a temporary measure, and is now the main tax base for the entire budget.
Although I have many questions, I have few answers on this topic.
Nothing is as sure as death and taxes, but at least we can pretend that death has no deadline we must meet.
Taxes wait on no man ( unless you have previously filled out the proper paperwork requesting an extension, in quadruplicate, and sent the proper colored forms to the proper departmental sections. )
Love to you all, and may you find preparing your returns much less taxing this year!
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