I was up early this morning and decided to take a drive from my home in the beautiful state of Vermont over to the New York side of Lake Champlain for breakfast - just a few miles away. The restaurant I intended to go to wasn't open, so I stopped at a little diner I had passed many times, but had never eaten in before.
It was one of those little places where there is a crowd of "old" guys (some of them not much older than me, in truth!) who obviously made this their regular hang-out. As I waited for my order to arrive, I read my book...and listened to their conversation as they ranged over a variety of topics...but mostly centered around the quality and cost of equipment needed in the various businesses they ran or had owned in the past - tractors, trucks, and other large equipment, very expensive stuff.
The conversation progressed to ways in which all this expensive equipment could be written off so that no taxes would ever be paid.
"If you're paying any taxes while you're actually running a business, you're not doing it right," said one.
Another recounted a story concerning a friend in Idaho whose business "owned 2 cars a big RV" and various other "toys" which "the business owned...but didn't own, if you know what I mean." The friend had sold the business and moved to Mexico, taking with him all these expensive items...tax free and having been charged off as expenses to the business, of course.
After a while, they must have become aware that they were saying some things which could be construed as incriminating if the right person heard them, because they called over to me (obviously the only "stranger" in the place) and asked, "You don't work for the IRS, do you?" I laughingly answered, "Sure I do...I've been taking notes." I left soon after!
The point of this diary is this:
These are exactly the same sort of guys who are first in line to moan and complain about "high taxes" and "what does Washington think they're doing down there?" whenever any mention of raising taxes comes up - even in the cause of slowing the national debt which the conservatives are so heated up about right now. This part of rural upstate New York is politically conservative and the rhetoric concerning Obama's handling of the country is strongly negative in many homes, places of business and even public areas.
My question:
Why are the tax codes written in such a way...with thousands upon thousands of pages of loop-holes and exceptions...that businesses and corporations and "the wealthy" get by without paying...not only their fair share, but often NO...taxes at all???
Now, I don't like paying taxes any more than the next guy. I enjoy the benefits I receive for home ownership - writing off my mortgage interest and property taxes, etc. - and I would hate to give those benefits up, but at some point someone is going to have to have the intestinal fortitude to throw out the tangled web of tax laws and start fresh.
The original Boston Tea Party was held to protest taxation they felt had been levied upon them unfairly by a distant, unresponsive government. However, our modern-day Tea Party has missed the point that the taxes we are asked to pay are meant to build and repair the infrastructure we all rely on and also to provide basic human necessities for those who are ill, elderly, or who have fallen upon hard times for any of a variety of reasons.
Taxes - when fairly assessed and well-used - are what allow us as Americans to live the kind of lives the "American Dream" has promised us. We should ALL pay our fair share.