O Tempora!

We often hear how hard it is to pay taxes. We pay taxes on just about everything – on our earnings, our property, our purchases, and even on certain services. Taxes eat up 30% to 50% of most household incomes. In this sense, the sense of proportion of taxes to our income, it is hard to pay taxes.

But our government has made it easy to collect taxes. This has the side effect of making it easy – in the sense of convenience – for us poor schmos to pay them. Income tax and Social Security/Medicare are withheld from our paychecks every pay period. Property taxes are generally collected by mortgage companies as add-ons to the loan payment. Sales taxes are collected with each purchase. We pay our taxes in nice little bites, so we don’t notice as much loss as if we had to pay in big lumps.

And that is precisely the problem: The government’s easy payment plans. I propose that paying taxes should be hard in both senses of the word. After all, tax also means “strain” or “burden”.

Federal withholding taxes began during World War II to make paying the huge cost of this conflict more acceptable. The Big One has been over for six decades, but federal withholding lingers on. It’s time for this to go, and time for the states to eliminate their easy payment plans, too.

The model for abolishing withholding already exists – quarterly payments for the self-employed. If you’re self-employed, you have to plunk down an estimate of the income tax you owe – and both halves of Social Security/Medicare. The income tax code just needs a minor tweak to make everybody “self-employed”. That is, employers would pay workers 100% of their salary, plus the 7.5% “employer half” of FICA. Workers would be required to manage their money so that they could pay their own taxes every quarter.

Property taxes are also a target for lumping up. This could be accomplished by state statutes requiring property taxes on financed properties to be paid directly by the mortgagor – the one paying the mortgage. Of course, mortgage companies would need some recourse for non-payment – that shouldn’t be hard to work out. Once again, the taxpayer would feel the pain of sending those hundreds or thousands of dollars to the bureaucrats.

Easy payment plans give the illusion of low cost to any product. The same is true for government, which has become stiflingly gigantic at all levels. Replacing some of the easy payment options will make taxpayers more aware of what the costs of legislation and regulation are.

This country was founded on distaste for taxes. Making taxes less palatable will create a real taxpayer revolt, which will lead to lower taxes and smaller government.

There are many good ideas floating about – good ideas how to be safer, live better, and live longer. These are ideas that ought to be adopted by everyone. A couple of these ideas are buckling seat belts when driving or riding in a car and avoiding smoking or smoke-filled rooms.

However, good ideas sometimes go bad. Sometimes, certain people want good ideas to become mandatory. Mandatory good ideas are bad ideas, because they obstruct the best idea ever invented – freedom.

If I am dumb enough to drive without fastening your seatbelt, I am risking injury or death that might otherwise be avoided. But my body is mine, and I harm no one but myself if I have a wreck and fly through the windshield. I harm no one but myself. The argument that taxpayers have to pay to patch me up is due to another gone-bad idea – health care that got mixed up with government mandates.

Another stupid idea is to set fire to a noxious weed and inhale the smoke. It is also not too good to hang around in closed areas where others are puffing on this nasty substance. It’s not nearly as hazardous as actual smoking, but it is very unpleasant and it makes you stink.

However, both smoking and breathing others’ smoke are voluntary activities. No one makes a person light up, and no one makes a person sit in smoke-filled rooms. You don’t have to patronize or work in a restaurant or bar where people are smoking.

Our benign and wise Colorado legislators want to protect us from ourselves. For one, they propose to make the failure to use seat belts a primary driving offense. This is wrong. It should not be any kind of offense at all, not even the secondary kind that it is now. Adults own their own bodies, and they have the right to be stupid. Regulating seat belt use restricts personal freedom.

The great and benevolent legislature also wants to snuff out smoking on private property. Wrong again. Private property is open to the public only under the owner’s conditions. Don’t like to breathe smoke in Rick’s gin joint? Leave. Your nose’s rights end where Rick’s property line begins. Big Brother should butt out of private business.

For the record, I have used seat belts for 44 years – since before most cars had them. I have never smoked, and I don’t allow smoking anywhere on my private property – at my home or at my rental properties. It is good to use a seat belt and it is good to be free of tobacco smoke. But these good ideas go bad when they are hijacked by grandstanding politicos who shove them down your throat.