Sunday, April 12, 2009

April 15th Blues

After a long, hard winter people should be able to enjoy the spring without the gawd-awful dread induced by the IRS. All the joy and hope for the new year is crushed by that feeling of impending doom that tax time brings. Even folks that know they have a refund coming dread the annual exercise of calculating the government's piece of their “action.”

If you do the math you will discover that the total IRS take only pays the interest on the national debt. That's right, your taxes aren't funding the war or feeding welfare mothers – they're simply lining the pockets of banksters who “loaned” non-existent money to fund the government in years past. This year's illegal wars have to be financed – kill now, pay later.

Every year at this time I get deeply disturbed that I have to spend so much time to figure out how much money the government wants to steal from me. Most years the figuring hurts more than the paying. The worst part for me is knowing that a legitimate government would simplify tax collection such that its people could enjoy springtime without tax worries.

There are many ways to run a legitimate government without harassing people by requiring they incriminate themselves by signing an income confession. I think part of the reason for the income tax (apart from taking your money) is to force people to submit to government edict in a most abusive way. It's some sort of Pavlovian training, some sort of slave conditioning.

The only reason for taxes is to fund government. To govern is to control. To agree to fund government is to agree that people are out of control and need their behavior regulated. I think the vast majority of people do not require governing. Most people get along with others and are fair-minded. They work and play within established social norms without the need for written rules.

But, then there are the sociopaths, what used to be called psychopaths. They make up about 3% of society and are usually prisoners or politicians. The sociopaths who manage to constrain themselves enough to stay out of jail naturally gravitate to positions of power due to their lack of compassion for others. They are usually smart, cunning and persuasive. Between their powerful positions and their compelling arguments, they can persuade many people to help accomplish their goals. Sociopaths are natural born leaders. Consequently, we live in a psychopathic world.

Since the psychos are in control, they naturally figure the rest of us are as evil as they are and so write law after law after law to regulate us. Have you ever wondered why politicians are also called lawmakers? If a politician doesn't write or sponsor several new laws each year he is considered a failure! There are so many laws, regulations and ordinances on the books that right now you are probably breaking several without even knowing it.

So while our controllers wriggle with joy as they transform springtime into tax time, providing a season of angst for the unsuspecting and obliging herd of sheeple, let us consider an alternative to income tax.

I propose we toss the income tax and all other taxes to be replaced with a very simple sales tax. Anything bought or sold would be taxed at 3% – with 1% local (city/county), 1% state and 1% federal. No other taxes to be levied. No income or property taxes whatsoever.

The kicker here is to tax anything that physically changes hands. Anything. Any hands. Any time.

Today, there is no tax on food if it is unprepared. The sociopaths traded poor people's food so they could trade real estate, stocks and bonds with impunity. The taxes lost on food are nothing compared to the tax savings the rich receive. We need to tax food and everything to avoid rich exceptions. No excuses.

No more resale licenses to pass sales taxes to end consumers. All taxes and all levels. This will remove several layers of middle man fat. There are resale levels in our economy that profit on untaxed markups that add no value to goods. Corporations create subsidiaries just to cash in on nontaxable redistribution of goods. All the middle men create are higher prices and we are better off without them. Taxing their operations will drive them out of business if they do not add value.

Only taxing sales would greatly benefit wall street. Today, companies employ accounting firms to hide their real income from the IRS in order to pay lower income taxes. These phony numbers are passed along to potential investors in their annual reports. These same companies will spend money on worthless write offs to offset taxable income. A lot of money is wasted chasing tax credits instead of investing in whatever the company actually does to create income.

If there were no income tax, corporations would not hide their income. They would seek to maximize income by avoiding unnecessary purchases. Accountants could go back to balancing books instead of manipulating them!

Can a 3% tax work? I think so. Remember, it is at every transaction level. A company buying steel will pay tax on that steel. When that company makes ball bearings, the company that buys those bearings will pay tax on them. When the bearings are placed in street skates, the skate company will also be taxed. When the skate is sold to a distributor, the distributor will pay tax. When the distributor sells to Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart will pay tax. Finally, you will be taxed on your pair of street skates with steel ball bearings.

Yes, you'll be taxed on milk, but so will the big shots be taxed while trading stocks on Wall Street or the financiers selling sub-prime mortgage instruments. The only exchange I would exempt is the exchange of labor. You cannot be taxed for exchanging your time for money.

So here we sit, dreading what otherwise would be a lovely spring day just to satisfy the gluttony of the Federal Reserve. Both the Fed and the income tax were created in 1913, look it up. (Other notable 1913 creations were the Anti Defamation League, the American Cancer Society and the Alfalfa Club – quite a busy year for the Creeple, but they do love their 13's.)

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