Taxes: more, less or same?

[Lamb]

When you think about voting for a politician do you consider how his/her win would affect your paying taxes? Do you vote for someone who would raise your taxes, lessen them or keep them the same?

 

[tango]

I'm more concerned with what gets done with the money.

In principle I'm not inherently opposed to higher taxes, as long as they are used for something productive. My concern with taxes as they are now is that politicians appear tremendously good at justifying a new tax with a grand claim of all the good they are going to do with it, only for the new tax revenue to seemingly get soaked up in the black hole that is public funding.

I remember when Tony Blair's government took power in the UK in 1997 and taxes started to rise. In future elections the then opposition Conservative party produced a range of posters with slogans along the lines of "You paid the tax, where are the police?", "You paid the tax, where are the teachers?" etc. I suspect there would have been a lot less hostility had the increase in taxes actually produced tangible and identifiable public good.

Of course when people want lower taxes the politicians are quick to ask them to identify which schools they would like to close down to save the money they are describing. Because, you know, it's unthinkable for politicians to cut down on their own wastage, it's easier to just pick a soft target and expect people to play their games.

 

[Lamb]

I personally do not want taxes raised since I pay an exorbitant amount of taxes as it is with fed, state, county, township, property, school, etc... It's never ending it seems. I would prefer that someone elected would go through and toss out some of the programs/receivers of monies that is frivolous. Reorganize how are tax dollars are spent and do it wisely.

If you do a search for tax dollars wasted you'll find some really silly things:

Front Page Featured | MRCTV

www.cnsnews.com

 

[tango]

Tax wastage is amazing at times. It's often a question of whether the cost of streamlining would actually benefit in the long term - it's easy to see how a process that costs $1000 and results in $50/year in savings is likely to be a false economy, but I often wonder just what could be achieved if we could cut most if not all of the waste from government budgets,

For me it's just another reason to adopt a libertarian mindset - the more we give government the more they waste, so it's probably better to give them less. But then there are some things that have to be managed centrally, so I guess it's a game of gauging the level of evil we can tolerate.

 

[JPPT1974]

Just need to pay off taxes. And live our lives. Without breaking the law. But really at times, the IRS can be overzealous.