When I was in high school, I had a full-time job “slingin’ hash” at Furr’s Cafeteria, and that’s where I had my first run-in with taxes.
Federal income tax, FICA, and since it was New Mexico, state income tax, all paring down the $3.10 an hour I was getting. (That rate included a “clothing allowance,” since I was required to wear white button-down shirts on my own dime.)
As I got older, I became more acquainted with taxes; excise taxes, sales taxes, and eventually property taxes. Then, entering the journalism world, all of the myriad taxes levied by every entity that could levy a tax became apparent. Hospital districts, school districts, cities, counties, states, the feds, all levying taxes on any and everything.
Smokers and drinkers get hit with a sin tax. Drivers get hit with road use, fuel, even heavy highway use taxes. My parents were even hit with a construction tax — euphemistically called a benefit assessment — when the city widened a road that they lived 2 blocks from. (The road construction was paid for mostly by federal grant funds, and the rest was paid by residents in the area, so the city didn’t have to crack open the bank account. If the residents didn’t pay by the allotted time, liens were placed on the property.)
Capital gains, both realized and unrealized, are taxed, and when you die, there’s estate taxes.
According to one source, across the country there are 97 types of taxes levied against the people. Two facts present themselves to me: the tax rates never go down (or away), and, especially on the federal level, they are never enough. Seriously, with a $36 trillion bank note hanging over the country’s figurative head, it’s excessively apparent that there’s a money problem.
While Texas doesn’t levy a statewide property tax, it does set the limits for the entities that do. Many of the propositions on the November ballot deal with taxes, and in a refreshing twist, they seek to either limit the tax or abolish it altogether.
I’m thinking that’s a good thing.
Granted, there are a lot of things that the government does that require funding, but especially at the federal level, it’s gotten way out of control, and way out of the limits placed on it by the Constitution. And the need to feed that beast is ever-growing. You need only to look at the current governmental shutdown to see that; the fight is based on spending even more money, instead of just paying for government to operate.
That’s the rub; as it has been so eloquently stated by many politicians, but best by Ronald Reagan, “We don’t have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem.”
Until we get a handle on that, we can pretty much expect that we’ll get taxed on everything and higher and higher rates, until all of us, government included, run out of money.
For me, any measure that cuts or removes the tax burden from all of us is like a glass of water on a hot day; and the longer the government stays shut, the better. Perhaps we’ll get lucky and the feds will figure out how revenue and expenses actually work.
In the meantime, remember who wants more money on election day. That’s a good indication of someone who doesn’t get it.
Tony Farkas is editor of the Trinity County News-Standard and the San Jacinto News-Times. He can be reached at tony@polkcountypublishing.com.
