Personal Tax Earmarking (a.k.a. How to Love Big Brother)
A reader, Lindsay, sent me a link to this article on "Personal Tax Earmarking," which is a system that would allow taxpayers individually to decide how to allocate their tax dollars on a first-come-first-serve basis to government programs of their choice. The author claims that this system would have a number of benefits both to individual taxpayers and to the government. For taxpayers, this system would promote a citizenry that would be more informed about the inner workings of our country's budget, and it would "allow taxpayers to take more personal ownership of the workings of the government." As for advantages to the government, the author claims that a personal tax earmarking system would encourage citizens to file their taxes early (due to the first-come-first-serve nature of the allocation process). In addition, this system would reduce the tax gap while improving taxpayers' attitudes towards paying taxes to the government.
I must admit, I am greatly skeptical of the value of a system like that described in this article. I think history demonstrates that no one ever really likes to pay taxes, even if those taxes are going to a good cause and even under full disclosure to, and control of, the average citizen. I have never once heard anyone utter the phrase, "Gee, I'm glad that I got to pay taxes this year." True, this process might make paying taxes more entertaining, but there is still the pill of taxes hidden inside all this jam.
Moreover, this program would not have that significant of an impact on the country's budget as a whole. Money would still be allocated on the broad scale by congress. Yes, citizens would be able to decide which pot their money goes into, but the total amount in each pot would remain the same when all is said and done. This would not have a significant enough practical value to justify the cost of implementing and maintaining such a complicated system of money allocation. This program is just extremely unnecessary to the money getting where it needs to go, and I find the benefits mentioned in the article mainly to be sugar-coated disguises for the high taxes already paid by taxpayers.
Taxes may be necessary, but we should be skeptical of any government program that tries to make paying money to the government out to be a pleasure rather than a necessary evil. Since everyone knows how fond I am of metaphors, here is one for you. The very last line of George Orwell's 1984 is just a bit too similar to this proposed tax system for my taste and political temperament. It reads as follows: "He loved Big Brother."
