When my father and I were discussing taxes back in February, we talked about leveraging our tax advantages and expenditures to reduce our federal income tax liability as far as possible. To that end, we talked about living in states without state income tax, maximizing donations, and using leveraged accounts to keep money in our pockets or into things we want instead of letting the government spend it for us.
Mark Levin spoke with a man on his radio program a few weeks ago who advocates a "fair tax" which would in essence allow taxpayers to protest the government by withholding tax money. This means that, in a consumption-based tax system, if you protest government expenditures, you refrain from purchasing goods and services that generate tax revenue, effectively denying the government money. I will detail my own version of this later.
So, I started wondering exactly how my money gets distributed to government programs. An illustration of my total payments follows:
Mark Levin spoke with a man on his radio program a few weeks ago who advocates a "fair tax" which would in essence allow taxpayers to protest the government by withholding tax money. This means that, in a consumption-based tax system, if you protest government expenditures, you refrain from purchasing goods and services that generate tax revenue, effectively denying the government money. I will detail my own version of this later.
So, I started wondering exactly how my money gets distributed to government programs. An illustration of my total payments follows:
This image is proprietary
My total tax liability (after refund) was a measely $1200, which is filtered out into the above described programs. However, there are very few things in that list where I think the government has any say, and I prefer to keep that money (preferrably) or earmark it to things I believe in.
If I had my way, I'd only pay for DOD, War, Veterans, DHS, Energy, Justice, NASA, DOT, Treasury and the Interior. If I did that, it would mean my tax liability would either be: $329.52 or distributed among those programs at proportionately higher rates. Let people who think we need welfare or federal control of education pay for that. I prefer not to.
I'd like to be able to protest by withholding money from things I don't believe in. The people who reallocate our wealth shelter their money and don't pay for the programs they write into law- they expect us to. In the end, everyone gets shafted because of their greed for power. Spend that $260 (DOD general plus War of Terror) well you folks at the DoD. I wish I could have given you more.
For now, I'll just throw some tea in the harbor.
Disclaimer: The author of this post is an aspirant for the United States Air Force, and so any allocations funding the DoD would be self-serving. Then again, how is that different from Algore?
No comments:
Post a Comment