By Neal Boortz

For The AJC
3:36 p.m. Friday, April 16, 2010 The “well duhhhhh” moment of the week?
News reports on April 8 informed us that about 47 percent of the people in this country don’t pay any federal income taxes. Right next to those news stories were other reports that about 47 percent of the people in this country think that the amount they pay in income taxes is just about right. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being a near certainty, what would you say are the chances that the people paying no income taxes are the same as those who say their tax burden is just about right? In case you’re wondering, I developed this incredible reasoning power in college at Texas A&M.
We Texans are clever that way.
You’re reading a newspaper. Now I haven’t actually seen any studies to confirm this, but my guess is that most people who actually read newspapers probably are net taxpayers rather than net tax consumers. In other words, you’re not exactly moochers.
Since we’re now about two days past the tax filing deadline I don’t have to tell you what a chore being an American taxpayer can be. It’s a shame, really, that the political class in Washington doesn’t have a good idea of what you’ve just gone through.
The average American taxpayer spent a total of 57 hours on the paperwork necessary to file their taxes. That’s just about equal to one workweek for a member of the productive class. Those hours spent by individual taxpayers are miniscule compared to the time spent by American businesses and corporations.
People much smarter than I have attempted to put a cost figure to tax compliance in this country. It’s isn’t easy. Estimates range from $300 billion to $500 billion. Now think about that. Do you think there is any chance you could figure out a way to use this money to actually grow our economy and put people to work again rather than wasting it on dealing with a destructive tax code?
Now some of you out there are waiting for me to turn this column into a rant for the FairTax. That would certainly be easy to do. I’m writing this column, as a matter of fact, on a high-speed train from New York to Washington after taping of an hourlong Fox Business Channel special hosted by John Stossel. On Tax Day I spoke at two tax protest rallies in Washington. Catch the Stossel special over the weekend, but for now let’s deal with some basic truths.
First, just where do you imagine this idea of a progressive income tax first surfaced? That would be in a book published in 1848 by two characters named Marx and Engels. The book was “The Communist Manifesto.” Right there — listed as No. 2 of 10 steps to a Communist nirvana — you’ll find the call for “a heavy progressive or graduated income tax.” So tell me, when 1 percent of the income earners in America are paying almost 40 percent of all income taxes, is that progressive enough for you?
You may find it interesting that No. 3 on the list was the “abolition of all rights of inheritance.” Death tax anyone? The Democrats want it back. Full force. (Just an aside here, but government schools — we call them “public” schools — were No. 10.)
Our income tax is no longer merely a means of funding the legitimate operations of the federal government. It is, in the hands of the Democrat Party, a tool for what they perceive as “social justice.”
Barack Obama believes that wealth is distributed, not earned. His oft-stated goal is to use our tax code to place wealth in the hands of those he feels to be deserving, not in the hands of those who actually earned it.
The 47 percent of us who pay no income taxes think this is a mighty wonderful idea.
Elections have consequences.
Neal Boortz’s column appears every Saturday. For more Boortz, go to Boortz on boortz.com


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