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S.E. Wood So that's why you don't
At a time when our tax rates are the highest in the history of our nation, ever wonder why the press keeps reporting that the average American doesn't support an income tax reduction? Have you ever met anyone who didn't want their taxes reduced? Well, neither have I. So where are they getting these people who say they don't care about reducing taxes? The answer may lie in a report issued recently by the Joint Economic Committee of the Congress, which explains
just who among us is paying the taxes. For the past 40 years our elected officials
have been manipulating our tax structure to take the most from
the few whose votes they don't need, and give it to the many
whose votes they do need. So here are the results so far: The top 1 percent of wage earners pay 34.75
percent of all federal income taxes. The top 25 percent pay 82.69
percent. The top 50 percent pay 95.8 percent, which means that
the remaining 50 percent of wage earners pay only 4.2 percent
of all federal income taxes. So is it any wonder that when they do the "man on the street" interviews, most of those they talk to couldn't care less about income tax rates because at least half of them aren't paying much of anything anyhow! Is there a lesson here to be learned by our
local politicians? Oh, you bet! Our own Gov. Don Sundquist was
a little late, but he has finally seen the light. You will recall
last year's state income tax proposal met with strong popular
resistance. The reason was that it affected too many people.
So this year he fixed it. Sundquist began his budget message by saying
that he is no longer recommending a statewide income tax. Instead
he proposed a 6 percent "excess compensation tax" on
those of you who are making $72,600 or more from a business in
which you are a least 1 percent stockholder, or if you are a
doctor, lawyer, accountant, engineer or other professional. Two things to keep in mind: (1) This "excess
compensation tax" would only affect a few of us now. But
once the mechanism is in place, it becomes a simple matter for
the General Assembly to include more and more of us in the loop.
(2) Businesses - lawyers, doctors, accountants - pay no taxes.
They just raise their prices or their fees so that we, their
customers, pay their taxes. That's the way it always works. And
the governor and our legislators know that. So it's the same story. The governor proposes
a tax burden on the rich. That's OK. Let them pay it. They have
the money. But the rich, in turn, pass the tax on to the less
fortunate. And the less fortunate blame the rich; the business
owners, the lawyers, the doctors, for the high prices they require
in order to pay the taxes the politicians have imposed upon them.
But we never blame the politicians and the pork-barrel spending
programs they support in order to keep themselves in office,
because they are always hiding behind a manipulative tax structure
of their own creation. See how it works? And we fall for it every time. |