Taxes

Not long back, the Idaho County Commissioners held a public hearing on the 2009 county budget. As is to be expected, a few people showed up to protest various (or all) parts of the budget and nearly all had their say to the commissioners, while other protesters paced the sidewalk out front with picket signs. When all was said and done the protesters were still unhappy, I got an idea for a column, and of course the budget was passed with minimal changes. For the most part I can’t complain about the budget I guess, although I do think it’s a bit excessive (particularly the bonus for elected officials) at points. But, as Commissioner Brandt stated, if we want the government to provide specific services, we should expect to pay for them, and that is what our taxes do. With that I might add, just who determined that we specifically want any particular government service? Nobody ever asked me at any rate. At the risk of making myself real unpopular at the courthouse, I suspect that most of us could quite happily do without the services of tax assessors and tax collectors! Then to, if I were speeding down the highway, I don’t think I’d really want to see a deputy sheriff coming up behind me either. Still, what government services do we require, what others do we want anyway, and finally, what services could we dispense with?

One big ticket item is the county road department. Most of us complain about potholes and washboards on the road, and of course we blame the county no matter who has the responsibility of taking care of a particular stretch of road. Without the road department we’d probably see a big reduction in the tax rate well enough, but I’m also afraid that our 476 mile long collection of county maintained roads would soon be little more than goat trails, generally impassable for anything less than a tracklaying vehicle! And don’t forget that your tax bill includes the levy for whatever highway district you live in, and that district is not a part of the county budget. The sheriffs department is another big ticket item, and one that a lot of people could happily do without I suspect. Still, our local deputies do a pretty good job of keeping the scofflaws under control. After wading through reams of Idaho State Police supplied statistics, it appears that Idaho County has one of the lowest crime rates in the state, and a pretty darn good “case closed” ratio as well. That they do with a total of only 17 sworn deputies who take care of somewhere around 16,000 full time residents, and lord only knows how many part time visitors each year. According to James Zehner, Idaho County assessor, the property valuation of this county is approximately one point three billion dollars! He says that the county’s cut of your taxes is roughly two dollars on every thousand dollars of property value. The rest of the tax bill goes to school districts, fire districts, highway districts, cemetery districts, flood control districts, and hospital districts, along with any other government apparatus that happens to have their hand in your pocket. At the same time, many of us have to pay even more taxes to whatever city we live in.

Then we have the big problem, Federal taxes. The fed’s tax our income, usually at what seems like excessive rates. Then they tax us all over again on everything from gasoline to tobacco. On top of that, there are a mirade of “hidden taxes” that further empty our wallets. When all is said and done, federal taxes claim well over half of our annual income. And what do we get in return for those taxes? Quite a bit really… or so we’re told by the government propaganda machine. We get “national defense” of course, complete with multi-billion dollar naval vessels, hundred million dollar jet airplanes, mega-bucks spent on spy satellites, eight-hundred dollar toilet seats, and of course trillion dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As if that’s not enough, we get the DOJ and federal law enforcement, wherein the FBI reads our mail, taps our phones, tracks every penny that goes through our bank account, worries about our library card usage, and produces well known operations like the mess(s) at Waco and Ruby Ridge that we’re not supposed to be concerned with because our government “knows best”, and is “taking care” of us. We get Homeland Security and the Patriot Act to make us more “secure” than we were before 9-11. We get the U.S. Forest Service that burns down our forests and then bars us from using whatever’s left of our own public lands. There’s the EPA that among other things keeps us from depleting our national oil reserves by not letting us extract the oil we so desperately need. Well, they protect Spotted Owls and Snail Darters as well, so I guess we can curl up with “warm fuzzy feelings” when the home heating oil runs out. And we get… (insert roll of drums here)… “The Fed”! That’s the quasi official “Federal Reserve” banking branch of our government that issues money… money that’s backed by nothing more than a vague “promise to pay” which makes it almost worth the paper it’s printed on. The Fed does lots of things for us, they borrow trillions of dollars from foreign countries every year to keep our government afloat, they decree how much our money’s worth, how many of our tax dollars will be used to bail out giant financial institutions that managed to get themselves into a jam, how much “money” is available for congress to give to this or that despotic foreign ruler, and they even determine how much interest you can draw on the pittance you managed to save for a rainy day. And there’s FEMA of course, those wondrous folks who come charging in a couple of weeks late, with truckloads of money to save the day whenever the Gulf Coast gets hit with a hurricane, or the Mississippi river floods the mid-west again.

Another tax provided “service” we get is watching our tax dollars being spent to support “the arts and entertainment”, which we really should appreciate I guess. After all, pornographers, talentless “actors”, wild-eyed “artists”, and filthy minded poets all deserve to “earn” a living, and a chance to show their “work” to the public… don’t they? How about my favorite tax money wasters… err… “spenders”, the US Congress. The most exclusive club in the world, congress gives themselves pay raises without asking the public for an opinion, takes long luxurious vacations all over the world at taxpayer expense, hand their overseas friends billions of dollars in assorted foreign aid, send billions more home in the form of pork barrel projects in the hopes of buying votes, and who enjoy one of the best retirement programs in existence short of being the CEO of an investment bank! Adding insult to injury, Congress said that they would dramatically simplify the US Tax Code, clear back in 1955. In the 53 years since that statement, our nice “simple and equitable” tax code has grown from 172,000 words to a more confusing 995,000 words, while our tax load, both local and federal, continue rising to astronomical heights!

I will of course have a few choice words to say about taxes at a later date. Right now, I’m running out of column space, and my Irish temper is rapidly running away from my common sense. Besides, if I really said what I think about all this legalized extortion and the people who impose it on us, my old Sunday school teacher would spend the next couple of weeks giving me a really hard time about using such language!