April 7, 2024
Several weeks ago, as the April tax filing deadline neared, Facebook featured some comments about how Americans feel about taxes.
Among those comments were these:
** The biggest scam in life: Paying taxes on money you make; taxes on money you spend; and taxes on things you own that you already paid taxes on with already taxed money.
** Paying taxes in the USA is like having a never-ending car payment on a car that won't run.
** If your country has enough money to give to illegals, your taxes are too high.
** If they can pay all these student loans, they can stop taxes on seniors!
Clearly, taxes are not popular with the American people, despite the need for the government to collect taxes to pay its bills.
Founder Benjamin Franklin in the very early days of the republic said the only two certainties in life are death and taxes. But he wasn't talking about income taxes, because they did not exist then.
In order to help pay for the Civil War, the United States government imposed its first personal income tax, on August 5, 1861, as part of the Revenue Act of 1861. Tax rates were 3 percent on income exceeding $600 and less than $10,000, and 5 percent on income exceeding $10,000. But this tax didn’t last very long. There were other income taxes of short duration.
The income tax we pay today came into existence in 1913 when the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution made the income tax a permanent fixture in the U.S. tax system. It was a tax on incomes of both individuals and corporations.
As much as people dislike the taxes they must pay, they generally understand that taxes are necessary for governments at the federal, state, and local levels to operate. And here in America, with our commitment to personal freedom, those governments are expected to be lean, efficient, not overbearing, and not overly expensive.
On the federal level, those characteristics are not being followed as our Founders expected.
USA Facts tells us that the “federal government collected nearly $4.5 trillion in revenue in fiscal year 2023 (FY2023). About half was collected through individual income taxes, while 37 percent was through payroll taxes. Other revenue sources included corporate income taxes, customs duties, and sales taxes.”
However, the report continues, the “federal government spent almost $6.2 trillion in FY 2023, including funds distributed to states, Medicare, Social Security, defense and veterans, transfers to states, interest on the debt, and aid to individuals such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and refundable tax credits accounted for 90 percent of spending.”
Worldometer online said that “the current population of the United States of America is 341,531,428 as of Sunday, May 5, 2024.” That’s about $13,000 in federal income collected per person. Spending, however, ran up to more than $18,000 per person.
Today, the National Debt stands at roughly $34 trillion. In 2006 the National Debt was around $8 trillion. A steady increase put it at about $23 trillion in 2020. And then the government stepped on the gas and the National Debt soared by $11 trillion in just 4 years to today’s $34 trillion. As a result, the per person amount to clear the National Debt today is more than $99,500.
The federal government is not as designed: small and limited in function. Today, it is too big, too expensive, not very efficient, and often quite over-bearing.
There are 15 executive departments and hundreds of federal agencies and commissions, employing approximately 1,427,700 federal employees, not including the military. Given the limited government philosophy of the Founders, many/most of these are not appropriate.
Which ones are needed? Here are a few of those executive branch departments that are sensible and needed: Department of Justice, Department of Defense, Department of State, and Department of the Treasury. While others may function well and sometimes provide positive guidance, are they really appropriate under the founding principles?
Why do we need a federal Department of Education to tell states how to educate the young? Why do we need the Environmental Protection Agency to tell private land owners what they can and cannot do with their own property? Why do we need a Department of Labor to tell businesses how they must operate? Under our system of federalism, these and other functions should be under control of the states, not the federal government.
In many of these departments, agencies or commissions unelected bureaucrats set rules in place with the force of law, complete with penalties. However, they are not approved by Congress, the law-making body. These bureaucrats tell the people that they work for, and who pay their salaries, what they can and cannot do, and can render punishment for them if they do not comply.
Over the decades the limited government philosophy of the Founders has fattened up and grown far beyond what it was designed to be, and what is needed and appropriate.
With every such step, the freedom of Americans becomes a little bit more limited. And if this concept continues much longer, America will no longer be the Land of the Free.
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