h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Today is April 15th. In the United States, that means you have to file and pay your taxes for the prior year.

In 2002, we made just shy of $75,000, and our bill for the federal government is just shy of $10,000. We're paying 13% of our income to the federal government, and that doesn't even include, Social Security ($5,200) and Medicare ($1,150) payroll taxes, and state income taxes ($3,600). These income based taxes alone eat up over 25% of what we earn. That doesn't include the money our employers have to match for the payroll taxes. If it wasn't for that, we'd get the $5,200 and $1150 that our employers have to give over to the federal government.

Then there's other taxes: property tax on our home, sales tax on everything we buy, ad valorum on our cars, all kinds of federal, state and local taxes on our cable and telephone bills, taxes on our gas for our cars, sin taxes on our alcohol that more than double the price of a drink. The list goes on. In the end, the government takes nearly 50% of what Americans earn.

It's frustrating. I understand the need for many government services. I've worked for the government most of my adult life.

But Why do they hide so many taxes so that people don't realize what they're paying? Why do these taxes have to be so complicated? I made a fairly simple mistake on Schedule C of form 1040 when I was listing my self-employment income. That mistake would have cost well over $1000 in taxes.

Then we're deceptive about who collects taxes for what. The federal government gives the states and local governments a huge amount of money. They provide federal highway dollars for roads, grants for special programs, etc. Why can't the states or local governments raise their own money for these programs? They have the power to do it. I've even see local governments say that they paid for programs with federal grants, thus saving the taxpayers money. Bull, they just took money from a different set of books.

I think we need to take a careful look at what we spend our tax money on and how we collect it.

Here are some things I think are worth trying:
The national retail sales tax (http://www.fairtax.org/). It would give us one place to pay for our federal government. It's simple and honest.

Make the government figure out our taxes for us. The IRS checks our taxes already. In 1996, we screwed up our taxes, and the IRS sent us a check for the money that we overpaid. They receive all the W-2's and 1099's so they know how much our employers and banks pay us. We could pay our taxes through a payroll tax like Social Security. This would make deductions hard to handle, but if we had fewer deductions, then our tax rate could be lower. The only one I'd even consider keeping would be the mortgage interest for a home you live in. It would be had to set up a system to refund that.

Those are my thoughts on this day.

Or even a flat tax with no deductions for all individuals and corporations?

Steve Forbes is a , but I did like that proposal of his...