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Every four years your
candidates for political offices take the time to snuggle up with you
and talk to you about your participation in government. No, I am not
talking about going out and voting, I'm talking about your amount due
to the government for services rendered. In other words, your taxes. No matter what they
tell you, politicians do not view taxes as a matter of obligation.
They do not view them as a matter of fairness. To a pol, taxes are the
revenue they need to establish programs and entitlements to assist
them in winning their next bid for office. Their concept of taxation
is to extract the most revenue with the least amount of pain and
whining. Taxes come in all
shapes and sizes. From the immoral (estate taxes) to the absurd
(Universal Connectivity charges on your phone bill) to the hidden
(gasoline, alcohol, tobacco), the taxes are in place to hit you where
you won't notice or mind them. When your parents pass and leave you
with an estate worth, say $140,000, you may be bothered that 30% of
that will go to the federal government, but this is a stressful time
for you and being pissed off about it is not a top priority for you.
It also only happens once in your life. The $2.95 on your phone bill
for Internet service for Indian reservations doesn't phase you in the
scheme of an $85 phone bill. You don't even know how much you pay you
in hidden taxes as they are just factored into the selling price of
these items. While these types of
taxes generate quite a bit of revenue for our government, there is not
enough money to establish the pork programs for each of our 537
elected officials. To raise this type of booty, they needed something
more clever, something more sinister. Something that is so inherently
immoral and deceitful, yet so decidedly brilliant that the citizens
will have no idea what hit them. I am talking about federal
withholding taxes. Most Americans
believe it to be their civic duty to contribute taxes, however I am
amazed by the fact that they are absolutely ignorant when it comes to
what they pay in taxes. These folks aren't concerned with what they
actually earn, they focus on what they get take home, and this is
where the trickery comes in. Imagine if you will,
that every spring your friends at the IRS send you a bill for $8500.
Would you pay it or would you question it? Would you feel satisfied
that you are getting $8500 worth of services from your government?
Would you reelect your Congressman? This is why they take
out your taxes in weekly increments. The befuddled masses would be
outraged to receive such an obscenely high bill from their government.
So they take it out, bit by bit, dollar by dollar, week by week as to
minimize the outrage. The people adjust their lifestyles not to their
earnings, but to their net pay. This is how they begin to fool you,
but it doesn't stop here. There is still a
chance that you may look at your W2s at the end of the year and be
outraged at the amount of tax taken. They can't allow this type of a
loophole for outrage. So now on to phase two of the scam: Your
write-offs. Write-offs are in
place to generate tax refunds. Everyone gets at least one write-off,
it's called a personal deduction. My question is: Why not raise the
minimum taxable limit amount by the $4200 that they allow as a
personal deduction? Because that would mean many wouldn't get a tax
refund. If you don't get a tax refund, then you may look at your total
tax due and become outraged. If you get outraged, then your elected
officials can't fund that ever so important program to study the
mating habits of turkey vultures. If they can't fund their pet
projects and return some money to your district, they don't get
reelected. Reelection is the only thing that matters to your elected
officials. It's a bait and
switch. They can't have you thinking about what you pay, so they
divert your attention by getting you to worry about how much you are
getting back. This is criminally genius. This keeps you quiet so they
can go on running the government without all those pesky citizens
getting in the way. If you still don't
believe that this is a scam, I wish you to answer the following
questions, without cheating, and tell me which figure comes to mind
quicker: What was your federal
tax refund from last year? What was your total
federal tax due last year? Click here to be notified of new Cynic columns. © The Cynic, 2000
View expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Political USA.
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