Besides living forever, most people I know want to stop paying taxes, or at least hand over less of their money to the government. They almost always fixate on the income tax.
And why not? It eats up a lot of one's money. It doesn't take small nibbles out of our pocket like a sales tax does. It doesn't hide itself in the price like the gas tax.
The income tax has a lot of complexity, but by April 15, most of us know how much of our gross income went to Uncle Slam -- some call it the "effective tax rate" -- and what tax bracket, or marginal tax rate, we're in.
But think about ALL of the other taxes -- the ones you see on your receipts and the ones you don't -- and try to come up with a total percentage of your income that goes towards the purchase of your government.
Bet you can't.
Don't feel bad, I can't either.
I've heard claims that up to 50% of our GDP goes to purchase government at its' various levels. Even if true, the figure only applies to the nation as a whole. It means nothing to me.
How much trouble would it pose to my bank to display the taxes I pay for the things I buy in my financial statements?
I assert that it wouldn't pose much of a problem at all, because I know two things:
1) Everyone already captures what, where, and how much I buy.
2) I can download my bank statements in one of several formats, including XML. Would adding a few more tags to each transaction drive up the cost very much?
So I propose that we kindly, but firmly, and most of all, constantly, ask our banks to include tax info in our financial transactions.
Because right now, I have to enter the information manually and it's a pain in the ass.
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