For those of you who procrastinate, now is the time (that’s me this year…) April 17th this year to get the Federal and State tribute completed. But what about “hidden taxes?”
I stumbled across this chart and was unpleasantly surprised to see the growth in the gas tax over the past 20 years. It’s invisible since it’s rarely broken out of the total taxes paid on a gallon of fuel. I don’t object to the gas tax per se, but I do believe there should be transparency in the taxes citizens are asked to pay and some consistency applied to the situation.
Property tax, use fees, sales tax, vehicle registration, “insurance,” social security – these are all taxes and they add up quickly. Taxes are necessary to fund our civilization and infrastructure, but I’d prefer one, visible bill that is either usage based or income based. Wouldn’t you?
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Tax Time
04.15.07 | 3 Comments
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“but I’d prefer one, visible bill that is either usage based or income based. Wouldn’t you?” – really?
Ok lets look at income only taxation –
There would be no dis-incentive for people to consume things which, per use, have hidden costs greater than the cost of production e.g. gasoline . ( obviously the government could increase those costs by taxing certain sorts of businesses and they would then in turn pass those costs on to us. Its a choice of where to put the extra red tape, with the individual or the company ).
Usage only taxation – well depending on your political/social/economic viewpoint some things aren’t paid for very well by usage taxation. Street lights, national health services etc.
I would almost argue the complete opposite and that in some cases, in an ideal world, income and usage should be combined. so that everyone was taxed proportionate to their income for gas instead a value added rate.
Note – the preceding view comes from a limey who no longer files US tax returns and has thankfully not had to in the UK either.
Interesting perspective, I don’t agree, but hey, I don’t have to! It’s more the transparency I’m after than anything else. What bugs me is that we’re paying more and more hidden taxes branded with labels like “use fee” vs. “this is a tax to…” which makes it incredibly difficult to actually know how much tax one is paying. That’s not right.
‘this is a tax to…’s would be great in that money would be ring-fenced up front for certain uses and taxation schemes would have to be planned in advance to cover predicted budgets rather than just falling into a big money pit. Governments would also be accountable to actually using tax income for the things they promised.
Unfortunately few governments, when they get their power, actually want to increase their accountability.
(as an aside – recent changes in the UK are increasing taxation and fees on air flights with the justification being that it is to cut carbon emissions. But again, there is no promise that all or any of this money will definitely be used in this way so it just seems like a cynical points winning and revenue generating exercise as opposed to actually trying to fix/mitigate the problem).