Column for April 5, 2007

When is enough, enough?

One battle cry during the American Revolutionary period was "No taxation without representation". Sometimes, I wonder if it is any better in America today than it was with no representation. All I have to do is to read the newspaper, the internet, or listen to news casts to just plain get annoyed. I sometimes feel almost numb to the constant assault upon the American taxpayer. I realize that the key is to be vigilant rather than to tune things out, but it sure isn't easy.

Just recently, we have seen proposals to annex property that is actually a form of taxation with promised future representation. There are bills before the U.S. Congress that fail to renew tax cuts that were only temporary. Here in North Carolina, there are proposals to continue in the tax raising mode. Our state representatives are also in the mode of increasing governmental control over the serfs of this state. For instance, did you know that there is a proposal to make you pay for and install two license plates on your automobile? There are all sorts of reasons for making this happen, none are sufficient to convince me of the need or justify the imposition and cost to the people who pay the bills in this state.

Does any thinking individual actually think that we are not taxed sufficiently in this state or nation to perform all facets of the purpose of government? Even at the county or town level? If we can find areas in which to actually cut spending at the town level, we can certainly find areas of waste, fraud, abuse, and unnecessary expenditure at each larger level of government. However, that is not sufficient for the insatiable appetite of government control.

One bill in particular, State Senate bill S1201, will put a 1% sales tax (though some call it a real estate transfer tax to soften the blow of its actual function) on people who sell their real estate. The idea is that the home seller will be responsible for coughing up 1% of the sales price of their property and handing it over to some bureaucrat. Of course, we all know that the government knows how to better spend your hard earned money than you do.

If that bill becomes law, you can kiss a good amount of home equity that you worked your tail off to build and call it your contribution...nay, your duty to serve your already bloated government. But this insidious bill does not stop there. Not only will this bill hurt you when you sell your home by taking away some of the money you would be putting towards your new home, it will do the same to hit you hard on your next car purchase.

The same bill would raise the sales tax on automobiles, more than doubling it. Yup, I can think of no better way than to make use of more of my money by giving it to some bloated bureaucracy. I mean, it is better used in the hands of a tremendously inefficient governmental operation than in paying down the debt of a new car loan, right?

Could the mindset that brought us this bill get any worse? Yes it could. The bill goes on to remove the deduction of the cost of the old car you want to trade in for your new car from the cost of your taxation. That means that not only are you going to pay double the tax on a new car, if this bill is passed, you are going to pay the tax on the entire retail of that same automobile, even though you are not paying the full price and are giving up your existing property in the deal.

The money grubbing attitude of government is enough to make one weary. How much more can we take of this? The paradigm that brought us the idea of constant taxing and spending is prolific in most all levels of government, but is certainly proportionate to the amount of taxpayers from which the money is forcibly extracted. The real sad thing about S1201 is that the tax hikes are to help replenish the highway trust fund, which was pillaged by the same state government, and that fund was never repaid, even when there was a huge surplus in revenue last year.

I used to be optimistic that we could stop or at least lessen the financial rape of the taxpayer, but I become less so as time goes by.