The Morality of Paying Taxes

With all the talk of taxes: what is a fair share, progressive versus regressive and flat taxes and the idea that the government is taking “our money”, it gets confusing. Personally I believe in progressive taxes period, whether it is income tax, inheritance tax, or investment income. The more you get the more you should pay. I believe it is the fairest system and also the one the benefits society as a whole the best. So much, for personal preferences.

What really irks me is people cheating on taxes. This is not a condemnation of those who milk the system to pay the least possible amount of tax; though I think it is unfair, it is legal. It is simpler than that. Those who don’t pay what they owe under our present tax system is my focus group this time. And, it is often the one folk can easily ignore or even think is just fine and dandy.

If you make money, it ought to be declared and you should be pay taxes on it. If you don’t you are a thief and a cheat. Think of all the folk who get paid by “cash” a euphemism meaning they will just keep the money, not declare it on their income tax and not pay tax. And for some reason that seems perfectly moral to folk. It isn’t. It is not just the big money makers than cheat and are thieves in this country like Bernie Madoff, it is also those folk who work for cash, take the benefits of what taxes pay for in our society, but don’t pay for it. Morality doesn’t vary from economic class to economic class.

I suppose I learned this morality at my father’s knee. Each year when it became tax time the entire family would get out all the shoe boxes with cancelled checks, receipts and the like and painstaking go through everything to figure out what we owed the government in terms of taxes. We lived on a 160 acre farm and farm taxes are not the simplest in the world, but my dad made sure the government got every penny we owed them. It was just the right thing to do.

I wish more people were like my Dad.