Posted on 06/18/2007 8:06:24 AM PDT by DogByte6RER
Feeling down? Paying taxes might cheer you up
By Joe Rojas-Burke
NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE
June 18, 2007
Using brain-scanning technology, researchers have found an unlikely force at play in the minds of people paying taxes: pleasure.
In their experiment, taxing people for a charitable cause activated the brain's reward centers – the same areas that respond to such sources of delight as food and sex.
“Paying taxes can make people feel good,” said William Harbaugh, an economist at the University of Oregon and co-author of the study. Previous research had established that voluntary giving stirs activity in the brain regions that process feelings of reward. The new study is the first to show that involuntary payments can evoke the same reaction.
The research is part of a blossoming field of study called neuroeconomics, which combines economics, neuroscience and psychology to better understand human decision-making, cooperation and competition. In the study, researchers gave $100 to each of 19 female volunteers. The volunteers confronted choices about giving money to a local food bank or having money for the food bank taken from them involuntarily, like a tax. Researchers scanned their brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging, a technology that can map surges in brain cell activity in specific parts of the brain.
The experiment helps explain the curious willingness of people to pay taxes, which has long puzzled economists. Given the low risks of getting audited, economic theories predict much greater rates of tax evasion than actually occur.
The findings also could help resolve a long-standing debate about the motives behind altruistic behavior. One side asserts that the satisfaction gained from contributing to the overall public good drives people to give money, a motive known as “pure altruism.”
The competing view, known as “warm glow” altruism, holds that people give mostly for the ego-stroking feeling that their personal act of charity made someone else feel better.
“Warm glow is a little more egotistical,” Harbaugh said.
The experiment showed that both forces play a role in altruistic behavior. Subjects had no choice in the taxlike transfers of money to the charity, but they still experienced reward-related brain activity. That showed pure altruism at work, rather than warm glow altruism, since the subjects had no choice in the matter.
But researchers also found that voluntary donations to the food bank triggered significantly more activity in the brain's reward centers than occurred when people paid the same amount as a tax.
“When people give voluntarily, you get some additional brain activity, which is attributable to warm glow,” said co-author Ulrich Mayr, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Oregon.
Based on how strongly the subjects' brains responded to receiving money or giving it to the food bank, the researchers found that they could predict how likely individuals were to donate. Those with higher brain activation when money went to the charity rather than to themselves were about twice as likely to give money voluntarily.
Besides bringing new information to scientific debates, the researchers said the findings may help point the way to improving taxation systems.
“We've shown that in principle you can devise tax situations where people feel good about giving,” Mayr said. In real life, however, he pointed out, perceptions of contributing to the public good through taxes may be too far removed. People subjected to taxes may consider their obligation unfair or object to their government's choices for spending the tax money.
Who commissioned this "scientific" study? The Democrat Party? The IRS?
I know that I feel nothing but stress and dread every tax season. I end up paying a CPA $$$ because the tax code is incomprehensible. The past several years I have also ended up owing the feds and the state. Trust me, I am not feeling any "pleasure" over writing checks for thousands of dollars to the U.S. Treasury or to the State of California.
The Congress and the IRS have so twisted the tax code that all of us can be accused of tax evasion.
The "pleasure" that I might feel after April 15 isn't due to my forced coercion to "voluntarily" pay my hard earned cash to the IRS. It is just more of a relief that this whole crappy thing is behind me...at least for the rest of the year.
“The power to tax is the power to destroy.”
Former Chief Justice John Marshall
Anyone suffering from depression are more than welcome to pay mine.
What a load of sh*t, have them scrub pots and pans for $10 an hour for 10 hours and then see how they like someone taking away what they EARNED, not what someone just handed them.
I’ve always said that election day ought to be moved to April 16th.
And by the way, I’ll bet our taxes funded this study.
I do not GIVE the government my money. They TAKE my money. And I DO NOT feel good about any of it.
The methodology is badly flawed. They GAVE the subjects $10 then took it away. They should have made it a meaningful sum and made the subjects EARN it by performing some arduous task that they had a good chance of failing at. Then ask them to give it to some cause that is undisclosed but government approved. Then it would be slightly closer to reality.
Some test.
How come it doesn't on me?
“When people give voluntarily, you get some additional brain activity, which is attributable to warm glow,”
Conclusion? Do away with taxes enforced at the point of a gun and replace them with charitable giving.
Or even better, take half the money from the people who succeed and give to the people who failed. See how many pleasure neurons fired then.
Top 10 Lowest State and Local Tax Burdens for 2007
by Human Events
Posted 06/11/2007 ET
Ranked by the Tax foundation
In its annual report on state and local tax burdens, the Tax Foundation says that “state and local taxes will consume a record-setting 11% of the nation’s income in 2007.” Below are the 10 states in which the state-local tax burden as a percentage of income is lowest (see the Top 10 list in the May 14 Human Events for the 10 highest tax burdens). The Tax Foundation compares state and local tax burdens by “combining the different levels of government, counting every tax and comparing those totals” to a measure of income. The entire report is available at www.TaxFoundation.org.
1. Alaska — State-Local Tax Burden: 6.6%
Per Capita Tax Burden: $2,729
Per Capita Income: $41,469
2. New Hampshire — State-Local Tax Burden: 8.0%
Per Capita Tax Burden: $3,504
Per Capita Income: $43,745
3. Tennessee — State-Local Tax Burden: 8.5%
Per Capita Tax Burden: $3,054
Per Capita Income: $35,960
4. Delaware — State-Local Tax Burden: 8.8%
Per Capita Tax Burden: $3,804
Per Capita Income: $43,471
5. Alabama — State-Local Tax Burden: 8.8%
Per Capita Tax Burden: $3,090
Per Capita Income: $35,007
6. Oklahoma — State-Local Tax Burden: 9.0%
Per Capita Tax Burden: $3,248
Per Capita Income: $36,077
7. South Dakota — State-Local Tax Burden: 9.0%
Per Capita Tax Burden: $3,435
Per Capita Income: $38,072
8. Texas — State-Local Tax Burden: 9.3%
Per Capita Tax Burden: $3,533
Per Capita Income: $38,005
9. Wyoming — State-Local Tax Burden: 9.5%
Per Capita Tax Burden: $4,340
Per Capita Income: $45,881
10. Montana — State-Local Tax Burden: 9.7%
Per Capita Tax Burden: $3,353
Per Capita Income: $34,415
Link: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=21064
Talk about a study which actually revealed something entirely different from the headline.
First of all, as others note, they were GIVEN the money and then it was taken away. But that’s not a major issue compared to the rest.
They were not “paying taxes”, they KNEW the money was going to a good cause, the only question was whether they had a choice or not.
Next, the study showed that, while they felt “good” about having the money taken for a GOOD CAUSE, they felt a lot BETTER when they were allowed to voluntarily give the money.
I think people pay their taxes because they realise they do get some service from government and it has to be paid for. That is something that mostly comes from people who work, as people who live off government don’t really think they should have to pay for things themselves, but those people don’t make money so they don’t pay taxes anyway.
“The experiment helps explain the curious willingness of people to pay taxes,....This is the dumbest B.S. Iv’e ever heard...No the curious willingness to pay is due to that fire breathing Godzilla I.R.S. standing behind you! the I.R.S. is the ONLY government agency that runs like a swiss watch. They want to be damn sure they get a slice of your wallet....
Leftists don’t have the means to “discriminate” between voluntarily giving what you yourself earn (charity) and forced confiscation through taxation.
Trying to explain this to them would be like trying to explain color to someone blind from birth.
Confusing relief with pleasure; paying taxes is like finally getting out of the dentist’s chair.
I see the Marquis de Sade is venturing into other fields.
Suuuuuurrrreeeeee. :::eye roll:::
Was their control group a bunch of students who were told to bash their heads against the wall for an hour then told to stop to have their endorphins measured?
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