"Americans will fork over nearly 30 percent of what they earn to pay their income taxes, but that is only a small part of the story. As you will see below, there are dozens of other taxes that Americans pay every year. Of course not everyone pays all of these taxes, but without a doubt we are all being taxed into oblivion. It is like death by a thousand paper cuts. Our politicians have become extremely creative in finding ways to extract money from all of us, and most Americans don't even realize what is being done to them. By the time it is all said and done, a significant portion of the population ends up paying more than half of what they earn to the government. That is fundamentally wrong, but nothing will be done about it until people start demanding change."
"The following is a list of 97 taxes Americans pay every year..."
(#54 is now considered the new normal)
#1 Air Transportation Taxes (just look at how much you were charged the last time you flew)
#2 Biodiesel Fuel Taxes
#3 Building Permit Taxes
#4 Business Registration Fees
#5 Capital Gains Taxes
#6 Cigarette Taxes
#7 Court Fines (indirect taxes)
#8 Disposal Fees
#9 Dog License Taxes
#10 Drivers License Fees (another form of taxation)
#11 Employer Health Insurance Mandate Tax
#12 Employer Medicare Taxes
#13 Employer Social Security Taxes
#14 Environmental Fees
#15 Estate Taxes
#16 Excise Taxes On Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans
#17 Federal Corporate Taxes
#18 Federal Income Taxes
#19 Federal Unemployment Taxes
#20 Fishing License Taxes
#21 Flush Taxes (yes, this actually exists in some areas)
#22 Food And Beverage License Fees
#23 Franchise Business Taxes
#24 Garbage Taxes
#25 Gasoline Taxes
#26 Gift Taxes
#27 Gun Ownership Permits
#28 Hazardous Material Disposal Fees
#29 Highway Access Fees
#30 Hotel Taxes (these are becoming quite large in some areas)
#31 Hunting License Taxes
#32 Import Taxes
#33 Individual Health Insurance Mandate Taxes
#34 Inheritance Taxes
#35 Insect Control Hazardous Materials Licenses
#36 Inspection Fees
#37 Insurance Premium Taxes
#38 Interstate User Diesel Fuel Taxes
#39 Inventory Taxes
#40 IRA Early Withdrawal Taxes
#41 IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
#42 IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
#43 Library Taxes
#44 License Plate Fees
#45 Liquor Taxes
#46 Local Corporate Taxes
#47 Local Income Taxes
#48 Local School Taxes
#49 Local Unemployment Taxes
#50 Luxury Taxes
#51 Marriage License Taxes
#52 Medicare Taxes
#53 Medicare Tax Surcharge On High Earning Americans Under Obamacare
#54 Obamacare Individual Mandate Excise Tax (if you don't buy "qualifying" health insurance under Obamacare you will have to pay an additional tax)
#55 Obamacare Surtax On Investment Income (a new 3.8% surtax on investment income)
#56 Parking Meters
#57 Passport Fees
#58 Professional Licenses And Fees (another form of taxation)
#59 Property Taxes
#60 Real Estate Taxes
#61 Recreational Vehicle Taxes
#62 Registration Fees For New Businesses
#63 Toll Booth Taxes
#64 Sales Taxes
#65 Self-Employment Taxes
#66 Sewer & Water Taxes
#67 School Taxes
#68 Septic Permit Taxes
#69 Service Charge Taxes
#70 Social Security Taxes
#71 Special Assessments For Road Repairs Or Construction
#72 Sports Stadium Taxes
#73 State Corporate Taxes
#74 State Income Taxes
#75 State Park Entrance Fees
#76 State Unemployment Taxes (SUTA)
#77 Tanning Taxes (a new Obamacare tax on tanning services)
#78 Telephone 911 Service Taxes
#79 Telephone Federal Excise Taxes
#80 Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Taxes
#81 Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Taxes
#82 Telephone State And Local Taxes
#83 Telephone Universal Access Taxes
#84 The Alternative Minimum Tax
#85 Tire Recycling Fees
#86 Tire Taxes
#87 Tolls (another form of taxation)
#88 Traffic Fines (indirect taxation)
#89 Use Taxes (Out of state purchases, etc.)
#90 Utility Taxes
#91 Vehicle Registration Taxes
#92 Waste Management Taxes
#93 Water Rights Fees
#94 Watercraft Registration & Licensing Fees
#95 Well Permit Fees
#96 Workers Compensation Taxes
#97 Zoning Permit Fees
Yet despite all of this oppressive taxation, our local governments, our state governments and our federal government are all absolutely drowning in debt.
Via Zero Hedge
16 comments:
Do you own a home? Then you pay property taxes. Take the amount of property taxes you pay in a year, and divide it by 365. That amount will be what you pay daily to live there.
You know, you really don't "own" your home even if you've paid off your mortgage. Don't believe me? Stop paying your property taxes and see what happens.
We are taxed to death.
I like the idea of a flat tax, a national sales tax in place of the federal income tax. At least you pay tax in proportion to the money spent or not spent.
But all these add-on taxes---it's hard to find a cure for them. They are omnipresent. And the government wants yet more of our earnings.
One year I kept track of every bit of tax I paid, personal and business. I added it up and found that I was left with 45% of what I had earned to house, clothe, educate and feed my family, to save for retirement, etc. Forty-five percent. Utterly depressing.
What's another tax heaped on top? Americans are not poor enough yet. Politicians from both sides need to come together for the common good and the common goal to make America poor. Where does all the money go? See sink hole above.
Imagine how things would work if you could choose from a menu of government programs where all or a portion of your taxes had to be dedicated. Government workers would be primarily concerned with delivering value to the taxpayers so they got funded next year. Imagine if they actually cared about what you thought about how they used your money.
I would trust such decisions would be much better and more intelligently made by top tax payers. By definition, they generally know how to use resources much better. Of course such a program would require that corporate welfare be entirely eliminated from the options - a much needed change anyway.
If I could rally the number of people for whom I pay their "fair share", I would have a nice sized army to march on the halls of government - my people, come follow me. "A slave's life is all you understand, you know nothing of freedom. For if you did, you would have encouraged us to fight on, not only with our spear, but with everything we have."
I'd prefer a flat income tax, let them double the fed gas tax from $0.18 per gallon to $0.36 to fix the roads but I don't like th eidea of a federal sales tax. First, because it is hard to even total how much you paid in a year and second because the feds will view as a cash cow and keep raising it and rasiing it. I prefer that taxpayers can easily know how much we paid into the feds each year- with a sales tax that is too hard [as Haz noted above when he painstakingly tracked the sales taxes he paid one year].
That's a lot of common sense crammed into a short paragraph, Bagoh. As Insty would say - no room for graft.
This is partially a list of activities that zerohedge thinks ought to be subsidized by other people:
Flying into and out of airports
Dumping your garbage
Using a state park
Depleting the stock of fish
Income-tax evasion
Using the roads (this encompasses 13 of the items on the list)
In a world where every government activity that could be privatized was privatized, everything on this list would be charged as a fee except for the penalties for tax evasion.
Anyone want to argue that there shouldn't be penalties for tax evasion?
The problem isn't things have to be paid for - it's all about lack of accountability, waste and fraud, which now sucks up at least 50% of the tax dollars. Imagine if you could take that 50% of your tax bill and direct it to whatever government activity you wanted. Imagine the ass kissing you would get if you were actually the boss, because you would effectively have the power to hire and fire entire programs. Now the rich would have power because they have, to some extent, proven that they have better judgment than average on resource management resulting in higher income and resulting tax bill, but the masses would have power in numbers which would add up to big influence too, so you couldn't play class warfare or suck up to just the wealthy. The best action as a government employee, manager, or director interested in keeping your job would be to please everyone to the best of your ability, and to have provable results. Right now, I don't believe such people care what any of us think.
You just described user fees quite well.
I'd be interested to read the source for your "50% waste and fraud" figure. Sounds very important.
User fees only support programs that you personally use, and I may want to support those I don't use but find effective and valuable.
Admittedly, my 50% figure comes out of my ass. Even in a for-profit enterprise there is lots of waste, although 50% would be self-selecting for non-funding pretty quickly in the market.
I don't think anyone could convincingly put a number on it for all government programs, but when I look at things like welfare, individual and corporate, I see that most recipients that I know of personally don't get it because they need it to perform something valuable but simply because it's easier than the alternative of competing through effort, discipline, and creativity. In those cases it looks to me to be much higher than 50%.
When I try to think of a program that I'm certain is more than 50% efficient use of tax money from the collection to the service, I don't feel confident about many.
For a long time the real effort being put forth in government spending has been to find a way to get it and then to hang on to as much as possible by producing as little as possible. This is the mindset of many of those pursuing tax payer money from top to bottom. It's really just human nature. If a program is more than 50% efficient, then I believe that becomes low hanging fruit for the prowling hordes. Many of these people are motivated, intelligent, and capable, just not toward the best interest of efficient return to the taxpayer.
I believe a lot of pubic service has replaced outright criminal activity for many people, and many others are just taking advantage of legal wasteful giveaways. I don't even have a problem with people taking these giveaways. I just don't think those giveaways should exist.
As an example, during the depth of the recession in 2008 - 09 when the company I was an employee of and also CEO went through a huge loss of business, we had to cut hours of everyone dramatically to save the business. Under California law, every employee was entitled to apply for and get unemployment benefits for the lost hours. We filled out the paperwork for every affected employee and got them their benefits. I put myself on 24 hours a week, and collected unemployment for the lost hours. I didn't really need money, but it was legal, I had paid into unemployment for decades without using it, and so I had no problem with collecting the small amount offered, but I wish they didn't allow it over a certain income. I never lied on any form.
Likewise, I won't need my Social Security, but I will take it. My reasoning in both cases is that it's legal, I earned it, and it will get used better by me than if I let them keep it. The important thing and what differentiates it from much of the waste out there is that it's my money in both these cases.
The tragedy is that so many makers vote Democrat. Makes perfect sense for a taker to vote Democrat. Makes perfect sense for a maker to vote Republican. The takers understand full well that they are participants in massive institutionalized theft when they vote Democrat. The makers on the other hand can't seem to get it through their heads that they are the host and that the only viable chance they have is to vote for the party that at least won't rape them with abandon. My guess is that millions of makers can't come to grips with the ghastly obscenity of their position, i.e. being the eaten alive hosts of the parasitic taker army of other "fellow Americans." So they vote for compassion or fairness or social justice or some other chimera. Thereby dooming themselves.
I just did my taxes and the entire process is insane. The laws that have been written are ab insane.
The mortgage interest makes me hit big time pay dirt though-
tits.
Chip S. said...
I'd be interested to read the source for your "50% waste and fraud" figure. Sounds very important.
bagoh20 said...
Admittedly, my 50% figure comes out of my ass. Even in a for-profit enterprise there is lots of waste, although 50% would be self-selecting for non-funding pretty quickly in the market....I don't think anyone could convincingly put a number on it for all government programs...
Late to this party, as usual for me these days. However, I do NOT think the "guess" of 50% is very far off, and might even be modest. I am serious. I base this on my couple decades of working as a "Fed" and my military experieince as well. I will say that to actually go out and document every line item of waste, without political exceptions, would be doctoral dissertation level work. I don't have that energy anymore.
First "waste" is in the eyes of the beholder, however, there a few simple examples of where it is highly likely...and I mean v-e-r-y highly likely. Let's just look at one among the thousands (and trust me the Navy is among the least of the bad examples):
Try the simple fact that we had about 18 admirals in 1946, but now have 216 or more. Doing what? The largest ship in the Navy is commanded by a "Captain"...Navy equivalent to a Colonel...e.g., Brigade level command. Whole Naval Groups and/or "Fleets" are commanded by Admirals....and we have a total of 6 of them. So just what productive activities do the 216 admirals do for their pay? Actually, they don't do much in classic naval terms...their very existence is a feature of "grade creep" ...e.g., grades increased for status not responsibility. Just drive by or take a tour of the Pentagon and check it out....full Colonels are coffee fetchers.
Go one and consider every office in government and Congress...compare them to say 1980 versus now. Grade and staffing creep is redolent throughout government...it is self sustaining. Just in one tiny military agency office setting (equivalent to G4) I watched as a RIF was conducted to reduce a nation wide staff of 470 to 360...and then promptly a brand spanking new senior management stafdf of 40 was created, bringing it all back up to the actual TDA allowances for that organization....40 new positions where created that do NO funcitonal work, none, zero, nada, zilch...all as a product of removing 110 funcitonal personal in the FOA's who actual did work, but did need reduction by roughly 70 based upon today's work requirements...in short, 40 real workers were replaced by senior staff report compilers and persons who had less than 10% experience in the fields they oversee.
Do the math: 40 is 57% of the 70 alleged savings...NOT saved at all, so Bagoh20's 50% is just about right.
I could go one all night and into next year....offer me a Phd and I'll think about it :-)
BTW... I wrote that fast so the math may be dicey...but consider that the alleged savings of 70 were actually a cut of 110 functional workers, with an addition back of 40 do nothings...people who have responsibility for compliance with the Chief Financial Officer's Act but haven't a clue what GAAP is, let alone what a government GLAC is and how thery work (GLAC = General Ledger Account)...and this now 8 year retired military fed just spent 3 hours today...yes, t-o-d-a-y helping one remaining soul with some knowledge explain it all to myriads of idiots with no skills...let alone care about having any.
IN just today's case two of us, one long retired, are correcting the work of another 30 people.
50% Hah! We should only hope.
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