Posted on 05/06/2013 7:52:38 PM PDT by TBP
During World War II, the U.S. government needed to raise cash — and fast. A team of experts that included an obscure young economist named Milton Friedman came up with income tax withholding. It was, as one senator put it, the best way to “get the greatest amount of money with the least amount of squawks.”
Friedman, who would go on to become the high priest of the free market and small government, eventually appreciated the irony of that statement. He didn’t regret suggesting withholding as a wartime measure, but he spent the rest of his life lamenting its longevity in peacetime. “It never occurred to me at the time that I was helping to develop machinery that would make possible a government that I would come to criticize severely as too large, too intrusive, too destructive of freedom,” Friedman wrote in his 1998 memoir, “Two Lucky People.” “Yet, that was precisely what I was doing.”
Withholding numbs workers to the pain of their taxes. As the Treasury Department Web site explained as recently as 2009: Tax withholding “greatly eased the collection of the tax for both the taxpayer and the Bureau of Internal Revenue. However, it also greatly reduced the taxpayer’s awareness of the amount of tax being collected, i.e. it reduced the transparency of the tax, which made it easier to raise taxes in the future.” (Oddly, that fact sheet no longer appears on Treasury’s Web site).
Withholding leaves naive taxpayers suffering from a kind of fiscal Stockholm syndrome. They actually celebrate when they get a tax refund, the way a broken hostage might thank a kidnapper who returns his property to him. A refund is when the government pays you back for the interest-free loan it forced you to make in the first place. Congratulations!
Withholding is corrosive to democracy for many reasons. The unspoken assumption is that the government’s needs are more important than yours. Withholding means we are, in effect, working for the government before we are working for ourselves.
Worse, since taxpayers are anesthetized to the pain of paying taxes, we’re becoming ever more disconnected from the product we are buying. There’s a reason Tax Day and Election Day are just about as far apart as possible. Why not make everyone write a check every quarter? Better yet, make them write a check once a year — on Election Day. Not only would you get what you pay for, but comparison shopping works better when the price tag is in plain sight.
I’ve been advocating this for years.
Boortz said a long time ago, that if the American people could live tax free for an entire year and then write that check on April 15th, there’d be a revolution.
Its easy for a large portion of obama’s 51% not to care, b/c they aren’t paying. The rich in that group, have all sorts of deductions that drastically reduce their liability and good for them. I’m not hating on that part of the game.
But, so many are so numb to that part of life that they don’t think anything can be done about it.
So have I. But move one of the tax days to the day after national elections.
Make it even more fun. Have the people live tax free for the year (with many deductions gone, too), then have that check written closer to Election Day.
good post. what irony. i didn’t know that a young friedman put the knife in us. leftism always advances in a crisis.
No -- the day before.
The day BEFORE the national election.
Will never happen.
The tax livestock have become inured, and think only of their ‘take home pay’ and ‘getting money back from taxes!’ ... with trained chimps like that providing the largess that enables too big to fail bailouts and personal 757’s for the incumbency, there is absolutely 0 percent chance it will be changed.
James 5:1-6
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.
If it is taken while still the employer's, then it is the forcing of fraud upon the worker [that is he is not paid what was agreed], and if it is taken after it is the employee's then it is theft.
I was not anaesthetized - quite the contrary. I remember how very difficult it was when I was starting out in my chosen profession, with a great but low-paying job, and losing 25% of my weekly salary to taxes. I was living on a net income of what people got for welfare - except that I was working.
That’s when I began to hate the government.
Does anyone remember an old TV commercial that showed a young guy getting his first paycheck? He looks at it and says, “Who’s FICA and who said he could take my money?”
Writing one check once a year to the IRS will never ever happen. Many people simply don’t have that kind of money all at one time. When they cannot pay, then it would be up to IRS to collect. They would collect by withholding weekly amounts via wage garnishment, basically the same system we have now.
I would like to see employers pay their people in cash, then as they work their way down the line they will peel off, state, federal, fica, and every other thing they have to pay with out seeing.
Give it then take it back in cash. Do this for a little while and then maybe people will start waking up.
Can’t you claim a huge number of dependents to stop withholding?
Amazing that people who run businesses are required to be their employees’ tax collectors.
According to my Dad, that’s the way pay day worked when he was in the Marine Corps.
It’s called 1099. Get warm and cozy with it. Tell your employer you want to switch. Saves them money. Saves you money.
Deduct your medical premiums. Deduct your miles. Deduct everything you can.
Pay quarterly. Tell the IRS to go to hell. Problem solved.
and how about an Alternate Maximum Tax? Say 12% or less. If Jesus can get by with 10% why can’t Uncle Sam?
I was paid in cash but the taxes were already taken out. I was in 76-79 US Army.
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