My Tax Letter

Each year my wonderful wife does our taxes and gives me a total of how much we actually pay in taxes (total bill – fed, local, sales tax etc.) and the percentage of my income.

Here is this year’s letter to my senators/rep. If you like it, modification for your use or outright plagiarism is definitely encouraged.

It’s that time of year again. The weather is warming up, the days are getting longer, the trees once again are showing signs of life and the Federal Government once again confiscates my earnings. Yes, I know they have been taking it by large bites all year long but springtime affords me the pleasure of compiling the necessary numbers and seeing for myself what the gruesome sum total actually is. Over Twenty Four Percent of my income was taken from me in 2006. I am not quite sure what aspects of this travesty bother me the most, but I will make an effort to enumerate them as concisely as possible.

First and foremost is the attitude both of our politicians and too many of the general public toward success. We tell our children to work hard and get an education. Unfortunately we as a society do not tell them that the more successful that they are the more of their hard work will be taken from them. This is compounded by not only a progressive tax system but by an unequal treatment under the law where deductions are systematically taken away as one earns more.

Next and along this line of thought is the attitude of too many toward the successful and wealthy in general. The shear amount of economic ignorance of the general public is astounding. Who creates the jobs in this country? Where does the money come from to start or expand businesses? Who actually fuels our economy? Let’s take that money away from them and give it to others Laffer curve be damned. The call for higher taxes on the rich and an appeal to fairness is mystifying considering that the top fifty percent of wage earners pay ninety five percent of the taxes.

Next are the things for which this money is used. I am not an anarchist but a frustrated minarchist who dreams of a night watchman state or at least the holding of government spending to within the bounds of the constitution. What would our founding fathers think of the Department of Education or the Welfare State. We ceased being a country of the free when using the force of government we began taking property from one individual and began redistributing it to others. We are a Socialist state. What is amazing is that so few care. "The American Democratic experiment will succeed until the people realize they can vote themselves money from the public treasury... then it will collapse." De Tocqueville Finally is the general attitude that all of societies ills can somehow be fixed by the use of government. Instead of taking on problems from a private and individual tact we want the government to step in and in the end all we are left with is fraud and waste. I simply ask as my representative that you work to reduce government spending and reduce taxation, that you strive to reduce the size and power of the government, that you ignore the pleas of some to take money from others to give to them, and that if you are frustrated in these goals by others that you become a gadfly to those ends. That you realize the direction that this country is taking and heed the prophetic voices of Freedman, Hayek and Rand. Please forgive the pessimism of these closing lines. I write to you more for personal catharsis than for any real hope for change. I believe that currently neither political party wants to upset the status quo. What is worse is that many Americans are getting the government that they desire and are dragging the rest of us with them. The temperature keeps getting hotter yet the frogs fail to move.

Here is a letter written by my grandfather many years ago. You could say he was ahead of his time. I'm proud to know that -- way back then, when few others under stood what was being done to this country -- he understood and spoke up about it.

And while it certainly isn't a perfect solution to the wealth redistribution juggernaut we've allowed to be erected in our midst, I suggest you visit
http://www.fairtax.org and investigate a remedy to the idiotic Spring Follies known as April 15th.

And if any want to know more about the money issue my grandfather grasped back in '38, send me a private email and I'll shoot you a file explaining it in greater detail.

Coshocton, Ohio
May 13, 1938

Mr. Uncle Sam
c/o Henry Morgenthau, Jr.
Washington, D.C.

My Dear Uncle:

I am in receipt of a letter dated May 5th, from Mr. Morgenthau, which letter he signed as your Secretary of the Treasury. According to the dictionary, a Treasury is, among other things, a place in which stores of wealth are deposited, and as there does not seem to be any wealth in your Treasury, it would seem that he should have signed the letter as your Treasurer of the Deficit, as, according to the dictionary, a Treasurer is, among other things, an officer who receives the public money and disperses it and, as he has dispersed a great deal more money than he has received, he is in charge of a Deficit, instead of being in charge of the Treasury.

In his letter, he attempts to persuade me that I should lend you some money by buying Savings Bonds and he states that more than 1,260,000 people own more than $1,600,000,000 maturity value of these bonds, in addition to which, I understand that you owe about $36,000,000,000 on various other kinds of bonds and notes, and that you have a contingent liability of additional billions. In his letter, he states that the savings bonds mature in ten years from the date of issue, and that they may be redeemed for a stated amount at any time after sixty days from the date of issue. This all sounds very impressive, but when these bonds mature, or in case an effort is made to have them redeemed previous to maturity, I am wondering what you will exchange for them. Will it be food, clothing and housing, or will it be 59 cent dollars of some other much greater reduced value, which dollars, as was the case with the German Mark, under similar conditions, may be of value mainly as waste paper?

When considering an application for a loan, the reputation of the prospective borrower is generally considered to be of first importance, and to be real frank about it, your actions during the past five years have not been such as to inspire confidence in you, as in addition to spending in countless foolish ways, a great deal more than your income, you have not been absolutely honorable, truthful and reliable. After borrowing large sums of money upon the promise to repay it in gold, you decided not to do so. In addition, you took from your nieces and nephews all of the gold which we had and buried it in the hills of Kentucky. I am wondering if you think that by planting it, you can cause it to grow in value, or if, like whiskey, you think the quality of it will improve with age. You are also forcing your nieces and nephews to turn over to you large sums of money, which you have promised to save for us and to return to us when old age overtakes us. Instead of saving this money for us as promised, however, you have been spending it as fast as it is received, in what appears to be nothing more or less than a drunken joy-ride.

Even though one of your age and experience should realize that it does no good to prime a broken pump, especially after having tried it for several years without success, you continue to prime the business pump, and to kick and cuss it and work on it with a sledgehammer.

I addition to other things, the frequent use of a hypodermic has done you no good, and probably explains why you penalize and abuse your nieces and nephews who are thrifty and industrious, and reward those who are incompetent and lazy; why you killed five or six million little pigs, even though our political friends are always hungry for pork; and why you destroyed crops of cotton, wheat, corn, etc. to the advantage of producers in other nations.

Like any incompetent spendthrift who violates all the tried and tested laws of economics, there must be a day of reckoning for you at some time in the future, at which time you will find it impossible to pay your debts, or else you will be obliged to pay them in depreciated currency. In either event, it does not appear to be safe or wise to lend you any more money to be used by you in making whoopee and playing Santa Claus. In order to save you from yourself and to prevent the dissipation of what few assets you may have left, a guardian should be appointed for you but this will take time and probably cannot be accomplished previous to 1940.

Your distressed nephew,

Karl W. Bachert

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