I’m confused by the attitude people have towards taxes. It seems like taxes are the one area where the otherwise intelligent people completely lose their minds. Specifically, I've noticed that people always want to pay less tax no matter how low taxes actually go. However, it seems people also want to get more in terms of government services. Pay less AND get more – this isn’t the business plan I would expect my government to come up with, reader. And yet, most of the electorate seems to expect our government to run itself with this exact plan.
What accounts for this? Why do people seem to have a different thought process for taxes than they do for other things? When it comes to taxes, there seem to be no breaks. Someone like Bono can go on stage, talk about huge ideas like ending AIDS, actually do things with his time and money to bring the world closer to this goal, and… well, not good enough, because taxes. How is it possible?
These kinds of stories seem to pop up all the time. People say one thing and back it up with their time and money – unless the money is tied back to taxes. When Trump announced his big tax cut earlier this year, one line of thinking led me to wonder if his most vocal opponents – resist, resist! – would stick it to the big man himself by donating every nickel of the tax break to his political opponents. But even as my logical brain led me to this very reasonable conclusion, the other half of my mind was taunting me in the background… fat chance of that, amigo, the money’s going to beer or iPhones or a car…
Another strange thing about taxes is how people tend to mean federal taxes when they talk about taxes. This doesn’t mean I think people are unaware of state and local taxes, quite the contrary, it’s just that these taxes never really seem to come up in the general chatter about taxes. Whenever people talk tax, it’s about the federal variety. I suppose this is related to how the federal tax bill is the largest. But it’s also the most indirect in terms of how it benefits the average American. Most people struggle to talk intelligently about things with such an indirect impact. Perhaps a more-state oriented tax setup would help the average Joe like me understand taxes a little better?
