Death, taxes, and the clippers

For most people, there are three guarantees in the world we live in: Death, taxes, and the Clippers being bad at basketball. However, if you’re rich and not a Clippers fan, you just need to worry about death.

All presidential debates, political rallies, newspapers, podcasts preach on lowering taxes to relieve the burden on the average American-yet this frequently is seldom upheld. Part of the issue is that many eligible voters don’t know what fixing our tax system looks like, so they just trust that the charismatic politicians they watch on TV know what they’re doing.

But oftentimes they don’t….

For starters, a common misconception many have is that we need to either lower or raise taxes on the rich. Republicans argue that lowering taxes on the rich will allow them to spend more on their company creating a trickle-down effect to the average worker-resulting in higher wages. On the other hand, Democrats argue that if we increase taxes on the rich, the government will get more funding allowing them to revamp social programs. In theory only the latter model could work, but in reality, neither has seen much success because the rich don’t pay their taxes…like at all.

According to the New York Times, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig claims that every year the US Government misses out on $1 trillion due to tax evasion. The rich in America tend to have access to means of avoiding paying their dues while the average American is continually burdened.

Furthermore, the rich tend to have more taxes to pay due to our progressive tax rate resulting in important chunks of the government’s budget being absent. Social programs such as welfare and food stamps lack funding because the average American must cover for the rich, resulting in the people seeing less return from the taxes they pay. The government is supposed to be an aide for the people, giving back to those in need. But when departments are overburdened and underfunded as a result of tax evasion, the people miss out on much needed support while the rich, you guessed it, get richer.

Several economists have proposed a variety of solutions to fix our tax system while relieving the burden on the average worker, but in my eyes a sales tax, as opposed to an income tax, is potentially effective. This model completely flips the current tax model: rather than taxing what workers put into the economy, their income, it taxes what consumers take out of it, goods and services.

The reason why this could reduce tax evasion on all levels is because its fundamentally harder to dodge a sales tax than an income tax; you’d have to buy groceries from Canada to avoid this tax. Using some simple math, in 2022 the US government generated $4.9 trillion from income tax. To match this revenue using a sales tax, a 20% rate would need to be implemented. This rate falls a little below the point at which goods would become too expensive for the average American, so some might argue that it wouldn’t be fiscally wise to revamp the entire tax system to maintain the governments current revenue. However, that argument completely misses how hard it would be for the rich to dodge this tax. One might think that the rich can simply look to the foreign market, yet this point misses the aspect of convenience. First, no matter how rich one can be, they won’t buy all their goods and services online or from foreign venders. Furthermore, specific regulations can be implemented to avoid this loophole, such as specifying that this sales tax applies to all commodities purchased while in the US.

The missing $1 trillion won’t magically appear in the government’s back pocket and that’s not the point. The main goal of this admittedly ambitious plan is to alleviate the current situation, not to be a perfect remedy. With this switch in how the US collects taxes, a large enough portion of unpaid taxes will be added to the government’s revenue in turn taking the burden off the average working household.

Rather than paying taxes while seeing very little in return, the workers of this country, more specifically the most afflicted, will see benefits such as welfare and other social programs will see a steady increase in funding.

Another counterargument is that this model will decrease demand across the board for all goods, as they’d cost more because of the tax. However, within our current tax system, the average worker loses around 13% of their salary due to income tax. Under a sales tax model this portion would go directly back to their pockets-giving them more to spend on a year-to-year basis.

Opponents of this proposed tax system would reference a study in an article published by the Kellogg Insight, conducted by the Nielsen Consumer Panel and Thomson Reuters. They found that there indeed was a noticeable decline after the implementation of any sales tax-yet in this context income tax was still in effect.

There hasn’t been a country that implemented a sales tax in place of an income tax, and I ask why. Is it because the same politicians that promise to fix a corrupt tax system also benefit from it? Or is it because the people fall for the same old Robin Hood routine politician after politician put on. We can’t rely on the system working the way it should, or politicians being the morally responsible leaders they should be. Instead, we must do better instead of waiting for those in power to follow suit.

Any government should fear the people they represent, yet in America common culture is to fear those in power when we’re the very people who give them that power through elections! The represented have power over representatives, and its time we used this ideology in synergy with the empowered liberties the constitution bestows upon us to achieve a society that benefits those penalized by a broke system rather than those who profit off it.

Change predominantly is initiated through comprise, yet when the free people are oppressed by an elitist and borderline fascist government, we must take what’s ours…