Tuesday is April 15 – Tax Day. The official day that represents governments’ year-round, omni-directional shearing of We the People.
Looking to get filing help from our federal fleecers is at best a crapshoot.
IRS Help Line Has Error Rate of 30.8%
Busy Signal Awaits IRS Help Line Callers
We self-employed have to every quarter guess what we owe and send it in.
Salaried people get skinned every paycheck – “withholding” that hides governments’ multiple, monstrous bites. And tricks people into getting excited about an annual “refund” – which is really just a return of the interest-free loan they involuntarily made to the Leviathan.
But if any of us under pay – our mistake isn’t interest-free. Nor is it penalty-free. For governments, it’s forgiveness for me – not for thee.
Taxes – already obscenely multitudinous and high – have grown exorbitantly upward and outward in the last five years.
Even the Poorest of the Poor Pay More Taxes Under Obama’s Budget
How Obama’s Tax Hikes Would Hit the Rich and Middle Class
Full List of ObamaCare Tax Hikes: Listed by Size
Is the Leviathan slaked? Of course not.
Obama’s Budget Packed with New Spending and Tax Hikes
More of just the same ticket for a five-plus year foundering, floundering economy.
The government’s cash drain is historic.
U.S. State Government Tax Revenue Rises Third Year to Record
U.S. states took in 6.1 percent more revenue in fiscal 2013 than they did the year before for a record $846.2 billion, according to the Census Bureau.
It was the third consecutive increase, the agency said in a statement today. Revenue rose 4.7 percent from 2011 to 2012, and 7.3 percent from 2010 to 2011.
Yet we’ve added during this time $7+ TRILLION to the federal debt. So it’s clearly a spending problem – not a revenue one.
And that’s just the federal government. Many of the many states are also digging ever-deeper into our wallets.
The absolute last thing we should do is open another vein for these governments to drain. Yet looming before us is the October 31, 2014 end of the Internet tax moratorium.
Since 1998, the Internet Tax Moratorium has protected everyone from the average Internet surfer to small and large businesses from multiple and discriminatory taxes on Internet usage.
This moratorium was extended in 2001 and 2004, both times with bipartisan votes in the House and Senate.
And in 2007.
Senate Passes Internet Tax Moratorium Extension: 7 More Years Tax-Free
Which brings us to now. Thankfully, the desire to preempt this new rash of taxes is again bipartisan.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and others introduced HR 3086, the “Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act”.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and 16 other Senators introduced S 1431, the “Internet Tax Freedom Forever Act”.…
And even better – both sides are looking to make the tax ban permanent. Which means we won’t ever again have to play the brinksmanship games for which governments are notorious.
It’s an election year. We the People aren’t too keen on DC’s denizens.
Congress Now Less Popular than Head Lice, Cockroaches
I guess they had to poll on cockroaches and head lice to have something proximate.
Here’s a potential Kumbayah moment. A way for Congress to help themselves politically – and also avoid another concussive blow to a feeble economy.
Let’s get it together and get it done – now, well before November 1.
Editor’s Note: This first appeared in Human Events.