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Taxes Why People Pay Taxes by Sophia Barkat Why do people pay taxes in the US? Is it constitutional? What does the Constitution ask you to pay taxes for? How has taxation history changed over the years? How did tax-reform come about? Some questions to think about. I'm going to be focusing on Election 2004 Candidates -- what they say at their Election campaign sites -- and am coming across what they stand for and what they want done. It occurred to me that we all want a lot of social goods -- healthcare, education, defense etc -- and some of them can be provided for by private sector. So why do we want the Govt. to provide more services and goods when they can just cut taxes and let the people decide what is best for them? After all, imagine the Govt. choosing Aetna to provide health insurance! Yikes! I don't like Aetna. Will there be choice? Also, what will be provided by taxpayer money? Since healthcare etc is not affordable to 60 million US citizens (Howard Dean estimates -- http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?pagename=about_issues_healthcare) and I'm assuming that most of these people are poor, then is taxation just a way of taking from the well-off and making sure the poor have something to fall back on? If 60 million can't afford health-care, I'm assuming they can't afford private education either. In fact, more people can't. So, public education is important. A friend of mine tells me that public education is paid for my local taxes -- City and perhaps State -- via property taaxes. What else should Federal Income Tax be used for? What about Corporate Tax? Does it get used towards something specific? According to Gov. Dean, Vermont has almost 90% health insurance. If States are providing health insurance, then why are people paying huge Federal Taxes? Does the Federal Govt. pay some of the expenses of Vermont's Health Care? Vermont is 26th largest economy in the US. It's population is one of the lowest. Can the same level of coverage be possible for all the US States? Also, a huge part of the budget goes to National Defense. With 911 and the creation of Homeland Security, there seems to be something funny going on. Homeland Security Budget is separate from National Security Budget. The extra cost of prevention and risk management is something new to the Budget. It is different from expenses on National Defense -- tanks, bombs, planes, biological weapons etc, software, manpower. Obviously both aspects of security are needed, but it's strange to find out Gov. Dean saying that Veterans Hospitals can't even meet demands created by, for e.g., the Iraq War. It's no wonder soldiers suffering from Uranium fallout from bullets, artillery and tank-coatings are being sent home with no care. Cancer and other by-products of such Uranium exposure is being labeled as an unexplainable "Gulf War Syndrome". It is no wonder people like Timothy McVeigh are so mad at the US. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,109478,00.html by Cherrie Lynn Lipsett re: Sophia's post We pay taxes to run the federal government and institute plans on a national basis rather than some states doing more than others do. I think the income tax was put into law after the civil war. I didn't look this up but I think this is correct. I think after we got our debt from the civil war paid we stopped the income tax for a while then started it again after world war II and it has been a permanent fixture ever since. Like I say that is from memory and I am finding as I get older the memory is going. I was too lazy to run a search on it. I personally think the federal government is getting to large and therefore is using too much of our money and keeping too much of it. There is too much spent on administrative costs. We should have someone go through all the branches and cut them back. The federal government needs a big overhaul. It hasn't had an overhaul in I don't know when if ever. I think if we are going to continue to have local control over the school system then we should abolish the Federal Department of Education. What is done at the federal level should be done at the state level. Of every dollar for education the federal government collects it keep 50 cents or half for administrative costs for the federal department of education. And the federal department of education really does nothing. The states should have the heads of their department of education meet yearly just like the governors do and coordinate planning for education among the states. Most of the money for education is collected at the local level. Or most of the money that actually goes to the schools is collected at the local level. Most of it is through property taxes. However I think all property taxes of a city or region of a state should be put in a pool and doled out equally to the schools in that city or region. Not that each city is divided into districts which gets the money from the property taxes in that district. The present system favors the rich side of towns or regions and the kids of the poor to not have equal excess to quality education. I also think the department of human services should be really scaled back. Most of the programs instituted by it are done at the state level also and here again about 50 cents of every dollar collected by the federal government makes it back to the states. We do need a national health department and some national health policies as for food and such but most of the department of human services could be gotten rid of. Now when these departments are gotten rid of the federal government should collect less taxes and tell the people the states are going to collect the taxes now. The Highway Department Sales Tax on gasoline should be collected at the state level also and spent within the states that collect them. |
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