My take on income tax

Interesting post by Clara just below this one.

But what I find most distressing (I find a number of things distressing, but this is #1) about the income tax has nothing to do with the distribution; rather, I find the government's intrusion into personal lives that is necessitated by such a tax system to be loathsome.

Now, you have to tell the government (under penalty of fines or imprisonment if you don't; in short, the guys with the big guns show up at your house, so when push comes to shove it quite literally is a form of coercion):

-Who you work for (implicit in that is whether you were hired or fired at any time)

-How much they pay you

-How your money is invested, any shares you hold, and how much you gained or lost in your investments. This includes retirement investments

-Your marital status (implicit in that is whether you are gay or straight, forcing you in many instances to disclose your sexual orientation to the government)

-With whom you cohabitate (although this is already known through the census), but more troublingly who is financially dependent on whom in that household

If you wish to take advantage of any of the generous deductions or tax deferments (sarcasm?) you must also declare:

-What church you go to (i.e. to what religious denomination, if any, you belong), and how much money you gave them

-Any charitable organizations or causes which you support

Also (although this is for slightly different reasons) the government knows what political parties and candidates you support.

Of course you could simply neglect to deduct anything, and potentially pay hundreds or thousands more in taxes than you're "supposed" to, or you could take "standard deductions" (but if you get audited you'll have to disclose all the above anyway). You could also file zero single, in which case you do not have to disclose marital status (to my knowledge) or dependents, but you're going to pay MUCH, MUCH (extortionately so, if that's a word) more than if you did disclose.

(In fact, if you have sizable deductions or multiple dependents which you do not disclose, your tax burden could end up becoming larger than your take-home disposable income. This will land you in a situation somewhat analogous to that of Joe Louis, who donated his prizefight winnings to military support groups during WWII, and was later billed by the IRS for his tax responsibilities, despite the fact that the money had already been donated in its entirety to the war effort. Joe Louis ended up having to fight well past his prime simply to pay his debts, and take up menial jobs until the day he died; some of his later expenses and in fact his funeral were paid for by one of Louis' opponents, a German who represented the Nazi regime and whose loss to Louis was seen as a great moral victory for the American cause.)

Speaking of audits, isn't this also a potential tool that government agents can use to abuse political dissidents and other people they don't like?

And lots of other things as well.

I find this absolutely reprehensible, that we are forced to open our lives to the government's inspection and approbation.

It befuddles me why there isn't more outrage over this from civil libertarians and other members of the Left. If the J. Edgar Hoovers of the world are looking to keep little dossiers on all of us (particularly those of us they for whatever reason don't like), doesn't this just play right into their totalitarian fantasies?

Perhaps it's just because the system's been like this for so long that, like a fish swimming in the water around it, we are simply unaware.

The American people keep saying they want "Change." How about we start by changing this?