Here Comes Mister Taxman
By Thomas D. Segel
March 20, 2009
Now that the Obama Administration has you completely distracted with this bailout bonus hype, you can expect the stealth attack on your family purse to begin in earnest. Enhanced program plans for education, universal medical coverage, plus the massive bailout and spending programs already enacted demand that you reach deep just to cover the interest on debt, and more to reduce the principle. We will never be able to pay enough to reduce the increased government intrusion into our lives.
Under current laws Americans who pay into our income tax system are already contributing substantially to the federal pocketbook. Now it is true that more than 40% of our population pay no income tax at all. However, the remainder of us does remit 42% of our total tax load to the Internal Revenue Service.
That is correct, only 42% of the money we pay to the government comes from the income taxes we file every year. The remaining, or largest portion of our tax load is hidden in multiple charges we have seldom noticed. Warning...they are already there, and you can only expect them to increase.
Just about everyone knows about the Social Security or Payroll taxes paid to the government. When it is pointed out that huge numbers of Americans do not pay income tax, the retort is always that they do contribute to the Payroll tax. Well, each working American does contribute what averages out to be $862 in Payroll taxes. It doesn't end there. The employer also contributes another $862 in the employee's name. Now that isn't a free tax gift from the employer. Every tax he pays is figured into the bottom line; so that $862 has really been deducted from the payroll check you receive each week or month.
Most of these taxes are well hidden. Corporate income taxes average out to $806 per person in the United States. You never see that money vanish, but the sum has been added into everything you purchase. Taxes on fuel, excise taxes and sin taxes average out to a total of $330 a year in individual tax burden. Workers Compensation and Unemployment Tax combine to cost each American taxpayer another $160 a year.
How about the Import Tax, the Hotel Tax, the Airline Tax and the Utility Tax? They may not be in place for every one of us, but combined they eat into the overall tax bite on Americans to the tune of another $175 a year. We also shell out $60 a year average in state and local taxes, $41 in communications taxes, a like amount on electricity taxes, $17 on severance taxes, $34 on insurance premium taxes, $47 on alcohol and amusement taxes and about $50 a person in licensing taxes. In most states there is a state income tax adding to your heavy load.
Annually, the government brings in another $658 billion in these various forms of hidden taxes, which you can only expect the skyrocket upward under the proposals being prepared by the new administration. For example, the current gasoline tax of 17 cents per gallon is being examined. Government budget people would like to expand that tax to 42 cents per gallon. There is also a movement to tax any employer provided health benefits or medical insurance. Talk is that utility taxes need to be raised substantially to help with the cost of developing new "green" energy.
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