Who's Paying for This?

Here is the latest update on who is not paying taxes: 47% of Americans. A direct quote from a story on Yahoo News today says, "About 47% will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions, and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That's according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization."

Reading further in the article, we find the upper limits of tax freedom: "a family of four making as much as $50,000 will owe no federal income tax for 2009, as long as there are two children younger than 17, according to a separate analysis by the consulting firm Deloitte."

Let's review. First, nearly half of all Americans will pay no tax this year; secondly, it is possible to make as much as $50,000 and not have any tax liability at all. Why do I keep hearing about the "tax burden of the poor?"

Now, let's do the math, and I will say up front that this is sloppy and inaccurate, since I am not an accomplished statistician. Let's just take, oh, one trillion dollars. That won't quite cover the "stimulus money" this year, and doesn't even touch anything else, like grants, subsidies, military spending, congressional and staff salaries, and the list could go on. Now, we are told that only a little more than half of all Americans will pay tax, and I assume that means those who would have been tax eligible. For argument's sake, let's round the population off to 300,000,000. Now, let's assume that the average family has three people, so let's say 100,000,000 families. Then, let's say that in every family, both wife and husband work and are tax eligible. That makes 200,000,000 potential taxpayers. Now, let's cut that in half, and say that there are only 100,000,000 that will pay taxes from last year. Let's be fair and divide only the stimulus package costs by those taxpayers. Let's see...that's $1,000,000,000,000 dollars and 00 cents, divided by 100,000,000. That comes out to a per-person tax burden of 10,000 dollars each. With two earners per family, that's 20,000 dollars burden per taxpaying family.

Remember, this is just federal income tax, not FICA social security. Remember that this tax burden will be shouldered only by those who make $50,000 per year, more or less; that's a thousand a week. But also remember that, in my example, we have two earners, so it's actually much more. I'm even letting them live together without marriage so they can get that tax break; in spite of Republican promises, married people still pay more for the privilege of being married to each other.

And again, remember that we've only paid for the "economic stimulus" package. I know my figures are way off, and sadly, they are off in the wrong direction. If we were only to pay for the "stimulus" bill, the per-person rate would actually be higher.

We need to acknowledge that taxes are no longer the major source of revenue for our federal spending gone wild. Printing and electronic generation are where we are getting our money. The major purpose of income tax and the IRS is to regulate behavior -- behavior of businesses, organizations, and individuals. And now with "Health Care Reform," we find that the IRS will also be in charge of making sure we buy insurance out of our own pockets -- that is, those who are taxed. The rest of our country will be furnished all or part of their insurance by the half that work and earn, who invest and improve their positions.

So, who is paying for this? Well, simply put, it would appear that 53% of you who read this are. Of course, literacy leans toward higher earning potential, so if you found this blog and are reading it, there is a good chance that more like 70-80% of you would appear to be paying for this. But the real answer is, "all of us," including our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so on, because this rampant manufacture of artificial dollars will inflate prices and shrink the dollar to the point that a box of facial tissue will cost 20 dollars in a few years; of course, we've already had a taste of that since it already costs that much in a hospital room right now.

And now we have the truth about the IRS in its fullest form. The "I" is not true, since this is not "internal," but a private firm, unelected and un-approved, doing the work of collecting money; the "S" is silly, since it is not a "service" at all. Services provide things. The IRS doesn't even provide billing, receipts, or tax counseling. And the "R" is also false. There is no "revenue" in this work. The major source of revenue is coming from somewhere else.

I will continue to "render unto Caesar" since my faith and ethics tell me to. But my citizenship in this country, for now, allows me to speak out. I don't want to shoot anyone, nor do I want to break the law. But I would be remiss in my duties if I did not speak up.