Duty Before Desire

“Only the Little People Pay Taxes.”
Leona Helmsley

Leona Helmsley spent four year in federal prison denying she ever said that, but the quote made world headlines as a reflection of the contempt that America’s richest citizens have for paying their taxes. The perception that belies the quote is that there exists within the tax code separate provisions for the rich and the poor. That urban myth notwithstanding, both the rich and the poor have one thing in common: an unrepentant reluctance to pay federal income taxes. Speaking as an IRS employee, I can personally attest from experience that the calls seeking delays in the funding of democracy come in ad infinitum: Taxpayers call asking for a chocolate chip extension with a scoop of vanilla extension topped by a dollop of creamy whipped extension, and topped off with a maraschino extension. The IRS took 73 million calls in 2012: almost one-third of the entire US population – all asking for money from the IRS in one form, fashion or another. Yet, in spite of the ceaseless clamors for a cost-free democracy, freedom is not free. If there are any doubters, one need only seek out the nearest Veteran’s Administration hospital and ask the wounded warriors if Al Qaeda is in the habit of giving six month extensions to victims of I.E.D. attacks so as to allow them the use of their arms and legs for another half year. The common trait shared by veterans is a devotion to duty before desire: to sacrifice for a nation so that another citizen share not their burden of existential pain or loss for the benefit of the country. The common trait shared by taxpayers, rich and poor alike, is the desire to shift their duty of taxation to another citizen so that they sacrifice not the financial pain or loss for the benefit of the country.

The reluctance to pay income taxes is where the similarities between rich and poor taxpayers end. No group better personifies those whom we call “rich” than American CEOs who made 20 times as much as the average American worker in 1965; by 2011, they made 231 times as much as the average American worker. The explosive growth of CEO compensation has benefitted corporate lobbyists, who in turn pass on said compensation to members of congress in the form of campaign contributions to pro-business members of Congress. Congressional beneficiaries of such corporate largesse never neglect the tax preferences of their contributors, and the capital gains tax rate is a glaring example of this generosity. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that the capital gains tax rate (15 %), favored by investors, is lower than the ordinary income tax rate (up to 35 %) and will cost the US Treasury nearly $457 billion between 2011 and 2015. Furthermore, U.S. businesses get a tax deduction for the costs they incur in relocating their domestic operations to a foreign country, just as they get a tax deduction for moving their business from one state to another. Working taxpayers are being forced to reward businesses for hiring foreigners through employment of their children instead of America’s children, and it’s all codified by the tax laws and all approved by Congress, and all to the detriment of the nation.

Another distinction between the taxes that rich and poor taxpayers pay is the “Carried Interest Provision” which allows hedge fund and private equity managers to pay a 15 % tax rate unlike normal capital gains taxpayers who have to risk their own money (investments) to generate the wealth that triggers the capital gains tax in the first place. Lobbyists fight to keep this provision in the tax code and no initiative, either Democrat or Republican, has been able to close this tax loophole. The rich defend their wealth against the meek who lustily covet their riches lest it be they, and not the gentrified elite, who inherit the earth. To add economic injury to fiscal insult, tax rates for millionaires have fallen 25 % in the past two decades. The top 400 richest Americans have seen their tax rates drop by almost 50 %, due primarily to the Bush tax cuts that slashed Capital Gains tax rates on investments to 15 %, nearly half what the rate was under Ronald Reagan, adding nearly $2.9 trillion to the national debt. The metastatic growth of the national debt, and the albatross of interest payments that hangs around the necks of working taxpayers struggling to finance that debt, both generated by an unwillingness on the part of Americans to pay income taxes, are glaring examples that prove the American work ethic has been eviscerated by a laissez-faire corporate philosophy and a prostrated proletariat content to dream the American dream rather than live it, if the cost of living it is a lifetime of service to a nation dependent upon tax contributions for its growth and survival.

The arterial lifeline of revenue that runs from the taxpayers to the government is being transfused from the national coffer at the expense of the public good, and evidence of that inescapable truism abounds in every village, town, and megalopolis in this nation. Our public busses and subways have become moving billboards so as to finance mass transit for a growing population that reaps yet neither toils nor spins. State governments across the nation are aggressively politicking to sell to the lowest bidder what remains of the public trust under their political dominion: turnpikes, liquor stores, lottery departments, even entire school districts. The American work ethic was once the vocational gold standard recognized around the world; a careful reading of the tax code is evidence of just how much values change over time. For America to deliver on its promised dream of a better quality of life for its citizens, we must all invest more into the American dream than we take from it so that the investment retains equity sufficient to enrich our posterity ad infinitum. To reconstitute our democracy with the ideals espoused through such unparalleled literary expressions of human self-determination as our Declaration of Independence, we Americans must once again assert our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and fight to reestablish those rights by any means necessary, including the very necessary duty of submitting ourselves to the obligation of taxation for the betterment of the nation.

As you read this transcript of an actual call, ask yourselves if the attitute reflected in the conversation is one of duty or desire...

IRS: Thank you for calling the Internal Revenue Service. How may I help you?

TP: I paid my wife child support and alimony and I think I was stupid for paying the bitch so I want to know if I can deduct what I paid to her and the kids from my taxes.

IRS: You want to know if you can deduct your court ordered alimony and child support payments from your personal income taxes?

TP: Yeah, that’s right. I don’t even think the kids are mine. Let the government support them like they do the kids on welfare who don’t even know who their daddy is.