I remember growing up and hearing adults complain about taxes. A lot. One of my first "favorite songs" was Taxman by the Beatles, but mostly because it had a rocking guitar, not really because of the content. I thought adults thought it was cool to hate paying taxes and I thought that it was because they felt like their money was being stolen from them.
However, I did met one adult who genuinely thought tax-paying was good. She was a Mexican immigrant who I taught in an ESL class at El Centro Latino in Carrboro. The ESL teacher said something like "What's something that people don't like? Paying taxes. Let's go around the room and everyone explain why you don't like paying taxes."
The first lady to be called on said, "Well, I thought paying taxes was good. It pays for roads and schools." I guess when you come from a place with lousy roads and limited public education, you appreciate what American taxes pay for much more than an American who takes it all for granted.
I really liked her attitude and since then have always felt pretty similar about paying taxes. Basically, they pay for lots of things help us all the time, like garbage collection and police protection. I felt that paying my taxes was patriotic and I feel like I owe the government a lot of money for creating a country where I'm blessed with incredible opportunities and safety, even though I certainly don't agree with a lot of ways the government spends the money.
Yesterday, I was doing my taxes for the first time. Previously, my parents had an accountant that took care of it, so i just signed on the bottom line and that took care of my contribution. Now my dad is making me do my own taxes, and my initial cheerfulness toward my patriotic duty quickly turned into frustration and anger.
The source of my anger is not the amount I'm paying or the fact that I'm paying it, but rather the ridiculous tax forms that we are required to fill out. There is so much financial jargon that I don't know and I have to look up terms like earned vs. unearned income, tax credit, itemized deductions, and many others. I know that part of this is just growing pains since this is my first time filing, but it's such a pain in the neck I can't stand it. There are so many wordy questions like "If you are a dependent older than 65 or blind, check box A, if you're a dependent younger than 65 or not blind, check box B." I realize there is some value to this, but it feels like I'm taking a standardized test. I spent several hours just trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do and what I do and don't qualify for. I have a college degree and I can't understand what they're talking about half of the time. The whole experience left me pissed off for the rest of the day. And this was just doing the state taxes. I haven't even started the federal taxes. (turns out I'm doing them in the wrong order, too; some of the state forms request info off of the federal forms...augh). I now completely understand why some people despise taxes so much, especially if they couple this frustration with a sense of entitlement to all of the money they made.
However, there was one silver lining. My favorite part of the NC tax form is where they ask you if you'd like to put $3 of your taxes into public campaign finance. Of similar significance, but of less interest to me, they also ask if you'd like to assign $3 of your taxes to the Republican or Democratic party. The basic concept here is ground-breaking: allowing the tax-payer to choose where his or her tax dollars are going.
Imagine if you could have some direct say in how the government spends your money. If you think we need to improve health and education, you designate your taxes to be spent accordingly. If you think the war in Iraq is a bad idea, you can reassign your defense tax money from being spent on weapons and instead have it go toward veteran services. If you think the transportation department isn't meeting your needs, don't support them with your tax dollars.
If you turn doing taxes into a game of SimCity, everyone would be begging for tax season. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but I would love to be able to put certain designations on my money to make sure it is used in ways that I approve of. This would encourage me to pay more attention to the government and it's role in my life, and also to recognize what the government does for me. This would be one step closer to government by the people. If I could choose how my money was being spent without worrying that it might go to causes I disagree with, I would be much happier to give it away.
Now some of you (all two of you who read this blog) are thinking "What, you just spent the first half of this complaining about the excessive bureaucracy of tax code, and now you're in favor of putting in more options?!"
Now hear me out. All I want (so far) is something like a pie chart, divided into different funding categories, like education, transportation, defense, healthcare, etc. If desired, tax payers have the option of selecting what percent of our money goes into each category. For tax-payers with specific interests, they can then subspecify funding from within these categories. For example, if you decide to give your tax money to transportation, you can specify highway buget, mass transit, green initiatives, etc. Tax payers who don't specify or subspecify will have their money used as needed to fill holes in the budget. However, I think most people would be interested in specifying how they want their money spent; I think it's part of our capitalist upbringing in America.
Obviously, this is a first draft idea for me, though I wouldn't be surprised if it has been tried before on some smaller scales. There would also have to be limits, obviously, on how much of their tax money people can assign. You can't have everyone going off on some trendy spending idea while some basic service is being starved. You could at least test out this idea one year with a trial run without actually following the tax payer specifications just to see how people actually want their money spent and compare that to the real budget. There are still a lot of details to be worked out, but the mere concept gets me excited. Magically, from this one idea, I have gone from having a bad day to a good day.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I think you've got a pretty sweet idea, and heaven knows I would sign up for a self-distribution program in a heartbeat. I just try my best not to think about how much of my (granted, next-to-nothing) domestic income goes to our defense budget, and be thankful that my dad's handled so much of the grunt work so long. Not to offend you, but your philosophy sounds kind of Republican...let the people decide how to spend their money rather than a bureaucratic government.
From what little I remember from 9th grade civics, I think direct democracy worked out pretty well for early Rome where only a handful of people actually counted as "citizens," but not so great when the founding fathers thought about the masses of uneducated white guys in early America and decided to go with a representative form. Even if such a system could be logistically set up, I guess I have a hard time imagining an American public responsible and educated enough to be trusted with that kind of decision-making. And I'm not sure all that many people would want to participate, either. In the studies Atul Gawande references in Complications, a lot of Americans don't even want to be responsible for making their own health decisions; they'd rather defer to the medical expertise of their doctors. I think a lot of people would feel the same way about politicians and government spending. So many of us are "too busy" for whatever reasons, real or imaginary, to learn enough to make good, important decisions about the budget. The ones who feel differently are lobbyists (okay, and bloggers).
:)
Post a Comment