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Paying Taxes: Where the Real Power Is
Published Saturday, April 12, 1997

The signs of Spring are all around us -- buds on the trees, blooming daffodils, the vernal equinox, and great herds of whining taxpayers dropping 1040’s into mailboxes.
 
The way some people go on about taxes, you’d think that living in the best and most powerful country on earth should be free.  The rest of us know better -- there is no free lunch.  Taxes are a necessity.  Taxes give you a lot for your money.  Most important, taxes (and your vote) are your most powerful tools for controlling your government.
 
If you can, abandon your mental pictures of Prince John sending the Sheriff of Nottingham to seize the chickens and cows from the poor peasants, or Pharaoh sending his army to extract annual tribute from the Babylonians.  The United States is a representative democracy, where we pay taxes to ourselves and give back the benefits of government to ourselves.
 
Despite flaws in the system, taxes are good for us.  Here’s why.
 
Practically speaking, taxes get us services.  If you want to be the most powerful country in the world, drive on interstate highways, or help people in need, it’s going to cost.  Yes, I know you don’t always get what you pay for, but that’s government stupidity, not a tax problem.  It remains that in this country, we don’t ride for free.
 
It may not seem true at first, but paying taxes makes you the most powerful player in a democracy.  Voting is important, but money talks.  It’s well understood that the American middle class taxpayer keeps this country going by paying an overwhelming proportion of income taxes.  Government knows it would crumble if we didn’t pay.  We can legitimately say we own this country, although, like stockholders in a corporation, our day-to-day control is very limited.  We can vote the “board of directors” out, which we sometimes do.  If you ever want to demonstrate real power, find a way for all taxpayers to deny the government all money due, and you’ll see this country grind to a halt overnight.
 
Even corporations, who spend big lobbying bucks to get corporate welfare favors, can’t accomplish that.  The best they can do is donate heavily to candidates to produce deceptive commercials at election time.  And the commercials are intended to convince YOU to vote the “right” way.
 
Philosophically, taxes bond Americans together.  By choice or coercion, they are our community effort to get things done.  In the old days, we’d get together to help a neighbor raise a barn or we’d all chip in to build a schoolhouse and pay a schoolmarm.  These days it’s more abstract, but we still all chip in.  We as a people have agreed to share the costs of a powerful (if not always so effective) government.
 
By the way, taxes are good for the economy.  In simple terms, the government buys a lot of things with our tax dollars, and those things are made and sold by us.  The government employs a lot of people, and their paychecks buy pizzas and automobiles.  If you want a target, look at the bad effects of deficit spending, because that’s the area where we have lost our collective mind.
 
I recognize that taxes are coercive.  We don’t set the rates and we can’t choose not to pay.  Further, they put us in jail if we don’t pay.  But don’t go on about the wonders of private enterprise and the voluntary nature of the free market, because it’s not.
 
At the electric company, the phone company, or the gas station, you have no control over the rates.  You can choose not to pay, but you’ll be living in the dark and not driving your car very much.
 
I know the system of taxation has negatives.  Really, I haven’t been abducted by the IRS and brainwashed by a machine built at taxpayer expense.  So I’d be the first to say that 1) some people and corporations don’t pay their fair share; 2) the IRS is a catastrophe masquerading as agency; 3) the tax laws need reform; 4) nobody in government seems to listen; 5) you don’t always see what goods and services you get for your money.
 
But if we think about it, it’s easy to see that taxes are morally right and a practical necessity.
 
Barry Schoenborn is a technical writer, and a ten-year resident of Nevada County. You can write to him at barry@wvswrite.com. The opinions of columnists are not necessarily those of The Union.
 

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