If everyone had to pay their “fair share,” there would be a violent revolution in America.
If everyone had to pay their “fair share,” there would be a violent revolution in America.
T he ideal amount any American should pay in taxes is “the absolute bare minimum.” Because doing everything within the bounds of the law to avoid handing your money to the wasteful, bloated, and intrusive state is an act of patriotism. Every extra dollar denied the Treasury Department is more productively spent in the stock market or the supermarket or your local corner Gas and Cigarette market on slices of stale microwaved pizza and Red Bulls.
Even paying the bare minimum should be an obligation met with begrudging acquiescence — akin to registering your car at the DMV. Americans remain the most tax-averse people in the western world. We should keep it that way.
Now, if Donald Trump broke tax law, he should pay the penalty. But, judging from the breathless New York Times account of his finances, as far as we know now, that isn’t the case.
Of course, that hasn’t stopped a lot of people who know better from intentionally conflating tax evasion and fraud (“cheating”) with tax avoidance (“hiring an accountant.”) If the argument is that Trump’s contention that he is an unparalleled deal-making real-estate mogul is misleading, you are correct. But what was the president expected to do? Demand that his accountants make him pay more than necessary?
Most of his tax avoidance is predicated on net-operating losses, but the heavily indebted Trump aggressively exploited a slew of provisions in the tax code that allowed him to write business income as personal income. Though the most satisfying karmic aspect of the entire kerfuffle is learning that Barack Obama’s failed stimulus program sent Trump a $73 million check that helped him wipe away years of potential tax bills.
We should also note, that buried deep in the Times story was another important finding. It turns out that Trump’s tax filings only further debunk four years of conspiratorial storytelling by Democrats — and some of their media allies — suggesting that the president was being blackmailed over Russian debt. The story notes that his taxes do not “reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.”
In any event, for decades, Washington has been larding up tax law with distorting, cronyistic carve-outs for special interests and social engineering masquerading as code. This not only incentivizes the wealthy to hire smart accountants to massage their code for their benefit, it leaves the IRS to arbitrarily enforce the code. If you don’t like deductions and the complexity of the tax system, flatten it. A number of conservatives have been making that argument for a long time.
Liberals such as Biden have long attempted to cast paying higher taxes as an act of patriotism. The government has accepted such gifts since 1843 — viewing them as “bequests” from “individuals wishing to express their patriotism to the United States.” You probably won’t be surprised to learn that there are extraordinarily few confused souls who express their love of country by paying extra in taxes. Not even Biden, who has become quite wealthy on a government paycheck, has ever participated in this program. Democrats take their tax cuts like everyone else.
It may well be that accusing a billionaire populist of failing to pay his “fair share” is going to be an effective line of political attack. Really, though, there’s no such thing. Your share is an arbitrary number set by Congress that can change at any moment. In 2019, the federal government had to scrape by with only $3.46 trillion in “revenue.” Even after gaming the system, the top one percent of individual income earners paid nearly 40 percent of that tab while the bottom 90 percent paid a combined 30. If everyone had to pay their “fair share,” there would be a violent revolution in America.
Then again, the Trump tax commotion isn’t exactly new, either. In 2016, the same New York Times reported that, “Donald Trump Acknowledges Not Paying Federal Income Taxes for Years.” During a 2016 debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump admitted that, “I have a write-off. A lot of it is depreciation, which is a wonderful charge. I love depreciation.” When Bill Clinton aide, George Stephanopoulos, asked Trump about his decision not to release tax returns that year, this was the exchange:
TRUMP: I fight very hard to pay as little tax as possible.
STEPHANOPOULOS: What is your tax rate?
TRUMP: It’s none of your business. You’ll see it when I release. But I fight very hard to pay as little tax as possible.
You know, just like all of us.