When the tax man cometh, lock the door
Today's Financial News - Posted April 13, 2009
It is tax time. For politicians, it means figuring out new and ingenious ways of wringing the wallets of America’s wealth earners. For taxpayers, it means cutting a check to a government that is better at wasting cash than ever imagined by our forefathers.
By Andrew Snyder, TodaysFinancialNews.com
Baltimore – (TFN): America has become a tax-free nation. Instead of taxes our government merely charges “fees” and down payments for future “investments”. Cutting a check to the IRS is now considered the patriotic thing to do.
Even so, I think I will stick with respecting the flag, taking my hat off for the national anthem and honoring what our forefathers had in mind when they wrote the Constitution.
The liberal media is having a blast today discussing Tax Freedom Day, the whacked-out celebration of the theoretical day that we start working to pay off our living expenses and not Uncle Sam.
This year, it took 103 spins of the earth to reach pay-off. And according to most so-called experts making the front page, that is a good thing. Last year – under G.W. Bush, of course – it took eight days longer. In 2007, we would have to wait another 14 days.
And you thought Obama was raising taxes. Shame on you.
Of course, any of us that have ever taken more than a minute or so to ponder the current administration or the economy (or ever read the banter below a byline) will quickly realize Tax Freedom Day is upon us sooner than normal this year because most of us have less stuff to tax.
Few investment portfolios will have grown enough to be taxed. Incomes are down. Unemployment is up. And stimulus money is raining from the sky. We are paying fewer taxes because there is nothing to tax, at least under old rules.
That’s where lawmakers really shine, making new laws.
How about a tax for being broke?
Thanks to a faltering national economy, governments of all shapes and sizes, from tiny townships to the folks in Washington are devising all sorts of new “fee-generating” plans. Many of them are designed to sneak their way into existing bills, so we the taxpayer do not realize who is making our monthly expenditures rise.
One recent example almost all smokers have certainly felt is the increase in cigarette taxes. Thanks to one of Obama’s first moves, every pack of cigarettes now comes with a $1 federal tax. It adds up to about 20% of the cost of a pack of smokes.
But for most folks, sin taxes are forgivable. They won’t draw too many protestors.
But how about getting a bill for using the police department? Even though our taxes are supposedly already paying Officer Friendly’s salary, some municipalities have found the gall to charge the folks responsible for traffic accidents to pay for the officer’s time.
Or how about cell phones? Thanks to a wide array of user fees and taxes, the monthly bill for those must-have mobile phones comes with a tax rate of over 30% in some municipalities. No wonder the figures at the bottom of my bill are nowhere close to the amount I agreed to pay in my contract.
In the nation’s capital, officials are pondering a “Street Light User Fee,” to help the city recover the costs of lighting the city’s crime and AIDS-infested throughways. Nevermind the fact that citizens cannot freely choose to use the streetlights or not. The folks patching the holes in D.C.’s budget desperately need the extra $4.25 per house each month.
What’s next, a fee to sit on a park bench?
Nah, that would never happen. The homeless lobby would not stand for it.
Be loud and be heard
The way I see it, our elected officials are working to create a general fund, designed to be wasted and pilfered to their cronies and multiple secondary funds for those pesky little things the nation truly needs like infrastructure, water and food.
As investors and citizens with portfolios and real wealth on the line, we cannot stand for these sneaky and predatory taxes. If we do, we will no longer have anything to invest.
In less than 48 hours, on the nation’s real tax day, thousands of Americans will take to the streets to protest the country’s direction. If you have been affected by any of these taxes, I hope you will raise your voice in protest.
If we let this filth infiltrate our laws now, imagine what we will be fighting in a decade or two.
Give Washington an inch and they will charge you for a mile.
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