Tax policy is often difficult for folks to understand. Considering the actual number of pages involved, that’s probably no big surprise:
The complexity of the Tax Code has done nothing but grow since the Federal income tax was first introduced in this body in 1913.
When it was first created, the Tax Code was 400 pages. This year, it is 67,506 pages, nearly a 17,000 percent increase, pretty typical of government math.
Now, because we’re inching ever closer to Tax Filing Day, and because we’re in a presidential election year, I think it is important to simplify the basic Democratic approach to one aspect of tax policy – tax refunds:
If you don’t understand the Democrats’ version of tax refunds, maybe this will help explain it:
50,000 people went to a baseball game, but the game was rained out. A refund was then due.
The team was about to mail refunds when a group of Congressional Democrats stopped them and suggested that they send out the ticket refunds based on the Democrat National Committee’s interpretation of fairness.
Originally the refunds were to be paid based on the price each person had paid for the tickets. Unfortunately that meant most of the refund money would be going to the ticket holders that had purchased the most expensive tickets. This, according to the DNC, is considered totally unfair. A decision was then made to pay out the refunds in this manner:
- People in the $10 seats will get back $15. After all, they have less money to spend on tickets to begin with. Call it an “Earned Income Ticket Credit.” Persons “earn” it by having few skills, poor work habits and low ambition, thus keeping them at entry-level wages.
- People in the $25 seats will get back $25, because it “seems fair.”
- People in the $50 seats will get back $1, because they already make a lot of money and don’t need a refund. After all, if they can afford a $50 ticket, they must not be paying enough taxes.
- People in the $75 luxury box seats will each have to pay an additional $25 because it’s the “right thing to do.”
- People walking past the stadium that couldn’t afford to buy a ticket for the game each will get a $10 refund, even though they didn’t pay anything for the tickets. They need the most help.
Now do you understand?
A hat tip to Maggie Thurber, who appears to have taken it from the March 2008 issue of the Charleston County GOP newsletter.