Attention must be paid: Why do we have taxes?
- To pay for government programs.
- To influence behavior (e.g. deductions for energy conservation, giving to charities,...)
That sounds unexceptional, which it largely is. However...
Our attention has been directed to the Wall Street Journal's editorial page. There, they published an editorial, "
The Non-Taxpaying Class", which said, among other things:
Over the past decade or so, fewer and fewer Americans have been paying income taxes and still fewer have been paying a significant percentage of income in taxes.
[...]
Who are these lucky duckies? They are the beneficiaries of tax policies that have expanded the personal exemption and standard deduction and targeted certain voter groups by introducing a welter of tax credits for things like child care and education. When these escape hatches are figured against income, the result is either a zero liability or a liability that represents a tiny percentage of income.
[...]
... as fewer and fewer people are responsible for paying more and more of all taxes, the constituency for tax cutting, much less for tax reform, is eroding. Workers who pay little or no taxes can hardly be expected to care about tax relief for everybody else.
... the last thing the White House should do now is come up with more exemptions, deductions and credits that will shrink the tax-paying population even further.
Let us be absolutely clear on this matter:
Instead of having taxes based "on the merits", as it were,
the Wall Street Journal is advocating a tax schedule that will directly influence how people vote.
We don't allow public service announcements that say, "Vote for Proposition 16" or "Fred Young for Mayor". We shouldn't accept tax policies that are
designed to influence how people vote. That's anti-democratic.
Gedankenexperiment: Can you imagine the howls from the right if the tax code was amended so that you got a $500 deduction if the state you resided in had tough gun control? Or free condoms for the kiddies? Or ...
NOTES:
Ed Meese has chimed in recently with an affirmation of the WSJ position (no surprise there).
E.J.Dionne has commented on the WSJ editorial, and
CalPundit ran the numbers on the "Lucky Duckies" (who aren't that lucky, after all).
Paul Krugman weighs in as well.
posted by Quiddity at 12/02/2002 10:18:00 PM 
