Tenenbaum Flat on Taxes Tenenbaum Flat on Taxes
I just received an email from S.C. Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum warning me of oncoming taxpayer doom should her opponent, U.S. Rep. Jim DeMint, be elected to fill the seat of retiring U.S. Sen. Ernest Hollings. DeMint has been secretly supporting a radical, draconian tax scheme that, if I remember the email correctly, would raise taxes on one-third of all South Carolinians, provide unfair tax relief for the wealthy, and eventually cause a trade war on the planet of Naboo, resulting in the clone war and the end of the republic.
Not that the Tenenbaum campaign was over-reacting.
My "voter alert!" email from Tenenbaum let me know that Jim "Tax Cuts for the Rich" DeMint had proposed the total elimination of the Internal Revenue Service and the federal income tax, to be replaced with a national sales tax. The horror of life in the United States without a friendly, federal tax auditor peering into our paychecks is too much for the Tenenbaum campaign to imagine:
"DeMint's proposal would dramatically increase costs for all consumer goods and services ‹ homes, rent, cars, food, clothing, even health care and government services like public education." I suppose it's a waste of time to point out to liberal Democrats that, when the feds confiscate 30 percent of my income right out of my check, they've already taxed my "homes, rent, cars, food, clothing," comic books, cable TV, inflatable female companions and every other thing I would have spent my own money on if Inez's pals at the IRS hadn't snatched it.
Setting aside the outrage that inflatable friends are not tax deductible (according to my accountant, anyway), the idea of a national sales tax, or a flat income tax or a "value added tax (VAT) is to get the government completely out of the income-counting business. All that would matter is how much you spend, instead of how much you earn.
Inez Tenenbaum only supports modifying the current tax code (just what we need ‹ more new tax laws!) and ensuring that the rich, as the liberal mantra goes, "pay their fair share."
Here's the key difference between DeMint and Tenenbaum on taxes: DeMint is talking about something that is never going to happen, while Tenenbaum doesn't know what she's talking about at all.
Jim DeMint is off in low-tax la-la land when he dreams of ending the IRS. There's no way that liberals, lawyers and April 15th-loving accountants will let this legislation see the light of day. For people who believe in a very big, very powerful government, no tool is more important than the ability for some bureaucrat to be able to show up at your house and take all your stuff. If the government can't use the tax code to reward its friends and punish its foes ‹ well, how is it supposed to have any fun at all?
But that's fantasy. I think it's worth taking a few moments to introduce Tenenbaum and her friends on the Left to a little taxpayer reality.
Let's say for a moment that Inez is right that a DeMint-style national sales tax of 9 or 15 or 23 percent would, after eliminating all federal taxes, still raise taxes overall on 30 percent of South Carolinians. What would that tell us about South Carolina? It would show that a significant number of people here pay little or no federal income taxes.
And it's true. South Carolina is a relatively poor state that takes far more out of the federal treasury than we put in. Nationally speaking, South Carolina is the drunk brother-in-law lying on the sofa watching Cops re-runs who needs to go out and get a job.
Don't feel bad, though. It turns out that, according to a recent study by the Tax Foundation, the number of tax filers who will pay no federal income tax is a record-setting 44 million. And while Democrats keep talking about Bush's "tax cuts for the rich," the share of Americans who have to file income taxes but either pay nothing or get a handout (the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is tied to poverty) has jumped from 23 percent in 2000 to an estimated 33 percent in 2004.
More people are paying zero federal income taxes. South Carolina has an unusually large number of these people. So if we aren't paying the federal tax bill, who is? Why, rich Yankees, of course!
Yes, according to a new report from the Congressional Budget Office, you owe your federally subsidized school bus and cheap food and public radio and FBI to the evil, money-grubbing, Enron-loving, single-malt-scotch-buying rich. Every time some Democrat says he wants the rich to pay "their fair share," Bill Gates and Warren Buffett look to heaven and say, "From your lips to God's ear."
There are plenty of reasons to oppose an income tax (personally, I prefer a national property tax, but that's a topic for another time), but fear of the tax-dodging rich is not one of them. Right now the rich pay far more than their share in taxes. Most Americans probably agree with the Democrats that this is a good thing.
But that doesn't make it fair and it certainly doesn't make it right. To accuse Jim DeMint of trying to rip off the people who pay nothing by proposing that everyone pay the same percentage of something is particularly unfair.