Withholdings Mask the Pain of Income Taxes

As small business owners, my wife and I do not have income taxes withheld from the money we earn. As many small business owners do, we have to periodically write checks to the state and federal governments for taxes owed. I mailed these tax payments this past week and, while writing out the checks and observing the amounts, I couldn’t believe how much money I had to pay to finance this out-of-control government. I cannot be the only one writing these substantial checks who feels this way. I would feel better about writing these checks if I was reasonably confident that my tax money was being spent judiciously but I know otherwise, and so do many of you.

Here’s the hard truth; many of you worked about half of last calendar year to pay for a government that couldn’t give a hoot about efficiency or balanced budgets. As I sealed those envelopes – tax checks included – I began to wonder how long this can possibly continue. Now, to be clear, I am not making the case that tax payments to the government are categorically a net societal negative. American citizens should fund a constitutionally-limited, efficient, and citizen-centric government which provides quality services clearly defined by our Constitution, and I am not aware of any credible Republican, conservative, or libertarian candidate running on a platform of “no taxes, for anyone, at anytime.”

Our military, our court system and, at the state and local level, our police, fire and education infrastructures are all funded by the hard-earned tax dollars of American citizens. But, I am making the case that the exploding budgets of many local and state governments, along with our federal government, have diminished the credibility of these elected officials in the eyes of the millions of American citizens who are busting their hides to continue to pay for this free-for-all largesse.
Further diminishing the credibility of the Washington D.C. “tax and spend” crowd, and their sophisticated “fair-share” messaging operation, is a recent Tax Policy Center report showing that the top 20% of income-earners (those making $134,300 per year and above) are already paying an astonishing 84% of ALL income taxes collected by the federal government.

Digest that statistic for a moment; just two out of ten Americans are paying nearly 85 cents of every dollar paid in income taxes to the federal government. If this isn’t a “fair share” of the hard-earned dollars of Americans then the liberal “tax and spend” crowd owes us a detailed explanation of what percentage constitutes their mythical “fair share.”

Having debated this issue many times, both while running for office and hosting shows on talk-radio, I can assure you that these people will never give you either a “fair share” amount or a reason why that specific amount is backed up by data because neither exists. The “fair share” amount doesn’t exist because the tax and spend crowd doesn’t want to give you a hard number that would limit them in the future from surpassing that number. Their attitude is that if they can take 50% of your income, why not take 51% or 52%? In addition, there are volumes of data showing that lowering marginal tax rates on productive American citizens to reasonable levels actually INCREASES the tax revenue generated from the wealthiest Americans. Sadly, the tax and spend crowd never lets facts get in the way of a good soundbite.

As the April 15th tax deadline approaches, I hope that those voters equivocating over which candidate they want to embrace in the 2016 election presidential cycle take a good look at their paychecks. Income tax withholding has softened us. Many of us no longer have to go through the motions of actually picking up a pen and writing out a check to the government to pay our individual tax bills. We all owe it to ourselves to look at the amounts we are paying and to ask ourselves why we aren’t demanding better. If you had to write those checks to a private company in exchange for an expectation of services provided, and they insisted on maintaining a status quo of inefficiency and unaccountability, you would take your money elsewhere. I love this country, as do you, and I’m not going “elsewhere,” but perhaps it’s time the D.C. insider crowd that sees your money as their personal slush fund does.

We are being fleeced and I’m tired of it. Something’s gotta give.

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EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the Conservative Review.