You Bet Your Taxes

 Yes, here in the United States the unofficial left-handed holiday to be avoided is April 15^th; tax day.  It’s a colloquial term for the day on which individual income tax returns are due to the federal government; usually it’s the same day for the states as well.  Now I’m not going to drudge up a bunch of historical facts like The Revenue Act of 1861 was the first income tax created to fund the Civil War; ahem, the War of Northern Aggression as they call it down here in Geo-gah, because, well, I just did.  The technique stuck, and the constitutionality of it has been challenged ever since; with…well, no success.

  My concerned over taxes, and the laws of the land in general, is tied to the perception of need.  If a law does not serve the society, then what is the purpose of the law?  Which then logically brings up other compelling questions to ask; if it is a law, why isn’t it being enforced by the people who take oaths to enforce them?  Claiming scarce resources is a poor dodge from the responsibility to uphold the law.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t catch that robber, he ran faster than me”

  See what I mean?

   Of course, most conscious citizens would agree it’s necessary to collectively fund those services that would not be funded without all of our contributions:  defense being the foremost.  But the trick of it, to me, is the notion of all of us.  If American’s are anything, we’re fair driven.  And when something is so obviously unfair, well that’s fuel to make a whole lot of disgruntles.  Never mind the rate of taxes, or the abundance of loop-holes that corporations and the exceedingly rich use to avoid paying taxes; that’s privilege taking entitlement and it’s been with the human race for-ev-ah.

  What is a source of growing ire for me is learning about the alarming number and the amounts owed by government employee’s being behind on taxes? I mean, they’re paid by taxes and they’re…not….paying? The IRS 2010 delinquent tax report found thousand of federal employees owe the country more than $3.5 billion in back taxes, (up 12% from 2011.)

  Tax offenders include employees of the U.S. Senate who write the tax laws imposed on everyone else.  They owe in the neighborhood of $2.1 million.  Workers in the House of Representatives owe $8.5 million; Department of Education employees owe $4.3 million and over at Homeland Security, 4,697 workers owe about $37 million.  Active duty military members owe more than $100 million.  The Treasury Department, where Obama nominee Tim Geithner had to pay up $42,000 in his own back taxes before being confirmed as Secretary of Treasury, has 1,181 other employees with past taxes totaling $9.3 million.
 

The Postal Service, with more than 600,000 employees has the most offenders (25,640), who also owe the most ~ almost $270 million.  Veterans Affairs has 11,659 workers owing the IRS $151 million while the Energy Department that was so quick to dish out more than $500 million to the Solyndra folks has 322 employees owing $5 million.  The country’s chief law enforcement agency, the Department of Justice, has 2,069 employees who are nearly $17 million behind in taxes.  Like Operation Fast and Furious, Attorney General Eric Holder has apparently missed them too; all toll, the number of federal workers and retirees who owe back taxes come to 279,000.

  As with ordinary people, the IRS attempts to negotiate back-tax payment plans with all delinquents, whose names cannot be released.  But according to current federal law, the only federal employees who can be fired for not paying taxes are IRS workers.  There is a perverse irony in the fact that many federal workers are facing unpaid furloughs because of automatic spending cuts forced by the sequester.  I wonder how many will connect the dots to see how that works?  Sure, the culprits and the innocent are lumped together…sort of like taxpayers.