So I was sitting here, wrapping up our taxes (a bit late, I know, but the IRS is a little forgiving when you happen to be on the other side of the globe when April 15th rolls around), and a brilliant idea happened to occur to me. Well, maybe semi-brilliant.
Keep the tax code as it is. It is a bloody nightmare (as my father says, “I am a rocket scientist, and even I cannot understand how the tax code works!”), but changing that much is not the goal of this post. Instead, chnage the due date of taxes to October first, and do away completely with withholding. All taxes come due on October first, all at once, from everyone in the country.
However, Americans only have to pay the taxes if Congress has passed a balanced budget by September 31st – after all, October first marks the beginning of a new fiscal year. If the politicians have not managed this simple task by the due date, no taxes are paid until such time as it actually happens, and then people will be granted a week or so after that date to actually do the paperwork and wrap things up. Oh, and the balanced budget would have to take into account the fact that the government gets all of its tax income once a year – not spread out as with current withholding arrangements. Careful planning would indeed have to be used, and that is the point of the exercise.
For too long, too many people have been of the mindset that the government is forcing us to pay taxes. This is not the case. The government exists at our pleasure – it exists because the people allow it to (a basic tenet of all Founding Father governmental theorization and writings, and of even more since). And taxes are nothing more than the American populace allowing the government to take stewardship of some portion of our income in exchange for providing us things we like and deem necessary (a court system, national defense, international diplomatic relations, etc.). Sure, sometimes it might seem as though the government is demanding and we have no choice but to obey, but the reality is, taxes are our money, and the government should simply be helping us out with it. A lot of American citizens could stand for a reminder of this, and just about every politician could. Because, the simple truth is, if those politicians cannot be trusted with our money (by using it in a balanced and effective manner), they do not deserve it.
Granted, this idea would never happen, but I can dream, eh?
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