Ready for Your Spanish-American War Tax Refund?
The Federal Excise Tax, which was enacted in 1898, amounts to about $3 per month for the average say, $100 / month phone bill. Heavy phone users might pay $100 or more per year. Yep, this was actually to pay for the Spanish-American War, and we've all been paying for "it" since 1898.
Fortunately, once this ludicrous tax started getting some legs in the press, no one could really defend it and the tax has indeed finally come to an end. We're even being offered refunds:
You are to claim the refund on the 2006 tax form that you file in 2007.
You can opt for a standard refund of $30 (if you have one exemption), $40 (if you have two), $50 (if you have three) or $60 (if you have more). This option requires no documentation from you.
If you have (or want to go through the trouble of procuring) your telephone bill statements from March 2003 to July 2006, you can get a refund based on amounts you were actually charged. In most cases, this can amount to a lot more than the standard refund -- perhaps as much as $100 to $300 for many of us. You need to fill out IRS Form 8913 for this.
Let's see, I'll get out my "Fawlty Math" calculator. 2006 minus 1898 is 108 years, times $36 a year, times 200 million Americans.... equals a $50 refund. Yep, works out PERFECTLY!
Folks, this completely, utterly idiotic example is just the tip of the iceberg. I have never liked US taxes. I've never gotten along well with Uncle Sam, and I don't like him any better now. Trust me, he can make your life miserable if you aren't careful.
The reason we have this incredible waste is that Americans put their elected representatives (Republican, Democrat, and Lieberman) into Congress and then go promptly to sleep, completely oblivious to the greedy abuse of power that ensues. Congress taxes, Congress spends, and it spends more than it gets, but who cares! It's kinda like:
"And it's 1, 2, 3 what are we taxin' for?
Who cares, I don't give a damn
Next stop is la-la land."
What happened to the "Contract With America"? The Republicans conveniently forgot about it, and that's why the stupid morons got booted out in the last election. No, I think the Iraq war midterm election thing was just a cover for plain bad governance. The American People are smart enough to realize we are going to be in Iraq for a very long time. Look, we still have 40,000 troops in Japan, and 30,000 in Korea after 60 and 50 years respectively. But, wars as a percentage of GDP are small compared to the reallyreallydumb stuff that Congress spends money on.
Democrats want things to be "more fair" by increasing the percentage of tax the rich pay, and that's total BS. If I make $2 million a year and you make $200 thousand, and both our tax rates are 20 percent, then I ALREADY pay ten times as much in taxes as you do, and there is no reason to increase my tax rate to 40%. Close the loopholes the rich use, and you can even lower all tax rates across the board.
What we NEED to do is lower the tax rates for EVERYBODY, WAKE UP, and stop letting Congress throw money down the fyookin' TOILET! Taxes SUCK. We don't need them, at least not the way it's set up now.
Maybe we could get the Chairman of the Federal Lubrication Board, Alan Greasepan, to fix things up?
What's your opinion on the FairTax idea?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.fairtax.org/
Hi,Jon.
ReplyDeleteWorks for me. I think the most important thing is to get control over what Congress does with the money. Right now, there isn't much control, and the American People are asleep at the switch...
Well, the reason the tax rate increases with income can be argued as fair is that those making increasingly more profit and taking in increasingly more income are using the commons (roads, clean air, etc.) at an increased rate. Not neccesarily linear with respect to income. at $60K income, I drive my car, use roads and other services yeah, but if I'm at $6M there is a lot more than just 100 times as much utlization of the commons going on resulting from my profit taking. Also, taxation doesn't have to be "fair" in a tit for tat sense. We are citizens before we are consumers. If we decide that the best set-up for society is mainly based in capitalism, but as TR and Taft would put it, would like to discourage the pressure cooker from exploding, we can put things into place to discourage monopolies from forming. If we decide it is for the greater good of the nation and it's peoples that the most fortunate amongsts us carry a heavier load, it is within our rights. Hell, within our responsibilities if we're actually thinking about the well being of people besides ourselves.
ReplyDeleteI'm just pointing out the lines of reasoning here. I'm not going to say our tax dollars are spent well or even say graduated taxation is a good thing, but just pointing out a small bit of the logic and the bigger picture we should be considering instead of what we feel is "fair" based on our own self interests.
Its getting to be ridiculous with this taxation system. I cannot imagine still paying off World War 1 & 2, Vietnam, and The Iraq/Afganistan Wars. In addition to, our U.S. President, my New York State Senators, Governor, and Mayor are proposing higher tax rates on almost anything and everything citizens use?
ReplyDeleteBy the end of this year, we will see a massive tax revolt throughout the United States.