Today’s Mallard Fillmore promotes an interesting idea: end the withholding tax, give workers their full paychecks, and let them see how much they really pay.
I’m against the idea, mainly becuase it makes more work for people and it makes government revenue a bit difficult to predict– cash comes in spikes rather than a more or less smooth pattern. And we already know how much we really pay, thank you very much– we spend a lot of time each year figuring that out.
I’d much rather see the following: put a fill in chart on the back of the tax return, saying how you’d like your tax money allocated. Want all of it to go for defense? Perhaps you want to pay down the debt? Half for education, half for transportation? Or would you rather kick it all into the general fund and let your elected officials budget it out? Obviously, an percentage breakdown estimate of how your federal tax dollars would be spent would be included for comparison.
Doing this would get more people involved in the budget process in America, and let them think about where their money is going, assuming it’s non-binding– or where they’re putting their money, if it’s not. Or does the government really not want to know how the citizens want their money spent?
I’d much rather see the following: put a fill in chart on the back of the tax return, saying how you’d like your tax money allocated. Want all of it to go for defense? Perhaps you want to pay down the debt? Half for education, half for transportation? Or would you rather kick it all into the general fund and let your elected officials budget it out? Obviously, an percentage breakdown estimate of how your federal tax dollars would be spent would be included for comparison.
I KNOW it sounds like a great idea, Glen, but not only is it impractical, it’s really kind of stupid. Here’s why:
You’re going to have parts of the government being underfunded or not funded at all. I’m no big government whomp, but I ‘m also not opposed to funding the government for necessary expenses. You’re also going to have people micromanaging the budget by democracy. Which kind of negates the whole point of a representative government.
Besides, what you propose would actually contradict one of your reasons for opposing Mallard Fillmore’s idea. I’ve had the displeasure of filling out monthly and quarterly tax returns. In most cases, it’s not that involved. Take what you have as total income and multiply by a set tax percentage and viola, you have your tax owed. It would actually take MORE time to wade through the minutia of budget items in a regular federal budget than to simply do as mallard Filimore suggest.
I checked with the Fedral budget and to download a zip file for the current budget, just as overviews, would take 63 megs of space on a hard drive. http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/budget.html
As for what the government wants it’s citizens to know? C’mon, the information’s available ift they wanted to find out.