Before Raising Mine, Please Pay Yours
Andrew Malcolm, who runs a great blog over at the LATimes, reports this:
Over the years a lot of suspicion has built up across the country about Washington and its population of opportunistic transients coming to see themselves as a special kind of person, somehow above average working Americans who don't labor down in that monument-strewn former swamp.
Well, finally, an end to all those undocumented doubts. Thanks to some diligent digging by the Washington Post, those suspicions can at last be put to rest.
They're correct. Accurate. Dead-on. Laser-guided. On target. Bingo-bango. As clear as it's always seemed to those Americans who don't feel special entitlements and do meet their government obligations.
We now know that federal employees across the nation owe fully $1 billion in back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service.
And then he adds this, just for good measure:
Privacy laws prevent release of individual tax delinquents' names. But we do know that as of the end of 2009, 41 people inside Obama's very own White House owe the government they're allegedly running a total of $831,055 in back taxes.
How about this? How about an immediate moratorium on any discussion of tax hikes, fee increases, tax cut eliminations, or any other revenue-raising mechanism that has yet to be invented, until everyone in the federal government -- or at least, everyone in the Obama White House -- pays up.
It's awfully easy to vote for higher taxes if you have no intention of paying them.
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Comments :
May '10
Re: Before Raising Mine, Please Pay Yours
That's all well and good but that doesn't change the fact that a federal employee paying taxes is actually akin to you paying a kickback to your employer. Government employees paying taxes generates no new income for the government since their pay is financed by the rest of us in the private sector in the first place.
May '10
Re: Before Raising Mine, Please Pay Yours
Different rules apply to our rulers. Didn't you know that?
Seriously, this is a real threat to the nation. If everyday Americans decide that playing by the rules is for chumps, it all stops working. We can only exist as a civil society so long as rules matter.
Aug '10
Re: Before Raising Mine, Please Pay Yours
This sort of story is becoming part of that "jounalists are lefties" category - surprising only to those who have been in a cave the past 10 years.
The elites simply don't feel the rules should apply to them. After all, they are slaving away 20-30 hours a week (in Obama's case, anyway) to run the lives of the unwashed masses!
Sep '10
Re: Before Raising Mine, Please Pay Yours
That's an excellent point. Politicians and public workers are nothing but glorified welfare recipients, living on the dole. Conclusion: Get rid of them.
Jun '10
Re: Before Raising Mine, Please Pay Yours
Query? Where is the IRS? Probably out hassling small business owners who actually create jobs.
If I were president, I would make government employed tax scofflaws the number one priority. If a person's income is 100% supported by tax payments then they should be subject to the highest level scrutiny by the IRS to make sure they pay their taxes.
May '10
Re: Before Raising Mine, Please Pay Yours
Since most politicians have never run a business they don't understand that every government job created is a net loss. Obama's salary as President is $227,300. If he pays a 35% tax on it, he gives back $79,555. That's not new money in the budget, it just means the poor job he's done only cost us $147,745. Doesn't that make you feel better?
Re: Before Raising Mine, Please Pay Yours
Perhaps we should have a 100% tax on all income derived from having previously held the presidency? Sort of like the "Son of Sam" laws.
Aug '10
Re: Before Raising Mine, Please Pay Yours
Good quip, but there'd be problems with that in practice: for one thing, it'd eliminate a monetary incentive for presidents to be less hated by the American people for what they did in office.
Yeah, yeah, I know, plenty of lousy presidents parlay their former presidential status into big bucks -- JC comes to mind -- but I would like to think that a former president who was well and truly disliked would have a harder time profiting from his past than a well-liked president.
Jun '10
Re: Before Raising Mine, Please Pay Yours
This is an example of small thinking. Why not a 110% tax on all income derived from having previously served? Why not 150%? Why not 500%? It's easy to do. All it takes is an additional line on the 1040. How said taxpayer comes up with the additional loot is not my concern. I'm proposing a simple solution to a simple math problem: "I only send zem up; where zey come down is not my department," says Werner von Braun.
Aug '10
Re: Before Raising Mine, Please Pay Yours
I think we're onto something here. The IRS should have to produce a compliance statement for each congress-critter. Only when there is 100% compliance may they introduce a tax increase.
May '10
Re: Before Raising Mine, Please Pay Yours
Privacy law regarding tax delinquents should have an exclusion for White House and Congressional employees.
The American people are paying your salary with their taxes, and you can't be troubled to give back your share? Privacy restrictions should not apply: the IRS should publish your balance due, and you can deal with any negative outcomes that result from your hypocrisy.
But hey, I give more to charity than Vice President Biden despite a net worth that's probably well under a percent of his, so I obviously can't understand Washington!
Aug '10
Re: Before Raising Mine, Please Pay Yours
Or a sizeable tax on royalties from autobiographies, on the grounds that the author, having an unmatched intimacy with his subject, profited from an unfair advantage over competing writers? I am totally kidding. People say they want simpler taxes but they just don't mean it. Whether or not the opportunity to tax excites the avarice of rulers, it certainly excites the spitefulness of other taxpayers.
Aug '10
Re: Before Raising Mine, Please Pay Yours
John H.
Or a sizeable tax on royalties from autobiographies, on the grounds that the author, having an unmatched intimacy with his subject, profited from an unfair advantage over competing writers?
Kind of a dumb comment, I will admit after just a few more sips of beer, as the Son of Sam laws were meant in pretty much this spirit. In frail self-defense, I will claim I was thinking of people who wrote their books BEFORE their splashy acts.
Aug '10
Re: Before Raising Mine, Please Pay Yours
Mostly I blame TurboTax, mostly.
I agree that these people shouldn't be allowed to discuss raising our taxes until they get their own affairs in order. According to a TaxProf blog entry that Instapundit linked to today it's a lot worse than $1 billion: http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2010/09/over-280000.html. $3.3 Billion isn't chump change. Forcing federal government employees to pay owed back-taxes has been one of the options in Eric Cantor's YouCut program that I've voted for. Apparently, these folks only think a hypocrite means a Republican in a sex scandal.
Just as some of these Federal employees need background checks before being brought onboard, why not also require that they be square with their civil obligations too?
Re: Before Raising Mine, Please Pay Yours
Stephen Moore once suggested that the only way to get a flat tax enacted was to make it an option -- allow people to choose it, or stick with the current system -- and for the flat tax advocates to agree to set it a little higher than they'd ordinarily prefer. He said three things would happen: 1) people would choose to pay the flat tax anyway, because they'd rather pay a bit more and have the whole thing over with in 15 minutes; 2) it would make tax cuts simple to advocate and enact later; and 3) it would instantly raise the level of governance, because lobbyists would have fewer reasons to take congressmen on junkets as there'd be no tax loopholes to lobby for.
That, to me, sounds like a winning presidential platform!