Why Pay Any Taxes?
Many people get tired of paying all of these different kinds of taxes
, but few realize what these taxes are used for. So here are some purposes and the effects that taxes have on our nation.
There are four "R"s that you should know when talking about the purposes and effects of taxation. These are: Revenue, Redistribution, Repricing, and Representation.
The first purpose, revenue, is the most important and the main reason that we have taxes. Why do we need to raise taxes?
So we can spend money on things like armies, roads, schools, and hospitals. Most of the state taxes go towards things that we can see while a lot of federal money tends to be a little harder to understand where the money is going.
Federal tax money is used more for federal employees, wars, social security, social programs, and interest on the national debt. Now, if we have people who are choosing not to pay taxes, it hurts all of us.
There is no way that the federal or state government "makes" money on April 15th every year. There is too much national debt and too many different programs that we have to support for anyone to make a profit on it.
The second "R" stands for redistribution. The local and federal governments try to redistribute the money a little bit from the wealthier to the poorer sections of our country. Obviously, the poorer communities pay less in taxes because they make less money, but they still need good schools and all of the other programs that tax money pays for.
There was a school district in my state that decided to split because it was too large to handle and because they were having financial issues. The original district was divided by a freeway.
On the west side of the freeway, there were mostly poor neighborhoods. And on the east side of the freeway resided the richer communities.
The people on the east paid a lot more money in taxes because of the stores they had and the better property that they lived on. The people on the west did not pay as many taxes because a lot of them were renting and did not even own property.
The district split right down the middle. And you can guess what happened.
The east side prospers and is able to build new school buildings and get new equipment. While the west side loses that money and the schools start to deteriorate.
They are still in the middle of figuring out how to fix the problem so that it is fair to everyone, but it is going to take a while. There is no middle man for this problem.
The third "R" stands for repricing. For the past few years, the tax on tobacco has gone up higher and faster than the tax on other consumer goods.
What message are they trying to send to tobacco users? If they raise the price on tobacco, hopefully it will discourage people to quit smoking and chewing it.
The fourth "R" stands for representation. Remember how the people who came over to America in the late 1700's were being taxed heavily by the British Parliament and their slogan was, "No taxation without representation"?
These original colonists were being forced to pay taxes without having any say in how their country was run. Why should they have paid money to England when that money was not being used to help run America?
Today in our modern taxation system, the number of delegates from our state is determined by how much we pay in taxes. Shouldn't the majority of people have the majority of the vote?
Some studies say that direct taxation like this generates the most accountability from people and has a greater effect than indirect taxation. This is because people feel the effects a lot stronger when they have to pay income taxes than other smaller taxes.
Hopefully our country will elect leaders who are capable of spending our tax money responsibly and in ways that most people will agree with. But I think that we can all agree that we need to be taxed to help out our country.
by: Jack Landry
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