Crime Scene Investigators
May 26, 2005
Your tax dollar at work
Last week I read an article about CSI. Did you know that it is all filmed someplace near L.A? All those cops in Las Vegas uniforms? If you pull the cameras back 20 feet, you’ll find yourself in the San Fernando Valley. And that huge police crime lab? It would fit inside a phone booth. “Things are seldom what they seem.”
These words are especially true of America’s current tax system. If you only listened to TV news, it would seem that the American middle class has just won a fabulous income tax victory but in reality they have just lost their shirt. And their children’s shirt. And their grand children’s shirt. Pull the cameras back 20 feet and you will see they have been TAKEN TO THE CLEANERS by our current White House occupants and Congress. That is for sure.
Do what they do on CSI. Follow the clues, dig up the bodies and check out the DNA. The American middle class has just become the victim of violent crime. Corporations and billionaires used to pay 40% of America’s taxes just for the priviledge of tapping into the American market. Now they can tap the American marketplace from a post office box in the Caribbean and pay zero taxes. That’s a violent crime. Our pockets are being picked!
So what can we do to correct this terrible tax situation — besides doing some much-needed Crime Scene Investigation in Washington DC? “I have a new tax idea,” said my friend Joe Thompson. “It will raise enough money to pay off the national debt, it’s progressive so the rich pay more and it’s painless to us peons!”
“Tell me more,” I replied. He did. “You eliminate all taxes and simply charge a transaction fee.” A transaction fee? What is that? Joe started to explain it to me with numbers and charts and diagrams but my eyes started to glaze over. But Joe was not to be deterred. Like Katherine on CSI, he was out to prove his point.
“Jane, it’s very simple,” he explained as he dropped the flow charts and the Wall Street Journal approach and came down to my level. “A transaction fee works just like a sales tax. The fee is paid every time money changes hands. Every time you buy something, you pay a small transaction fee. When your employer buys your services, the employer pays a small transaction fee. When you buy a loaf of bread, you pay a small transaction fee. When you buy stocks or bonds, you pay a small transaction fee. Every time your bank processes a check, you pay a small transaction fee. Nothing or nobody escapes paying the fee. If you earn a fifty two thousand dollar salary, you only pay a total of $520.00 a year in transaction fees on that salary — far less than anyone is paying now. Also this replaces Social Security deductions from your paycheck. It’s a great deal. And it’s fair to everybody.”
Oh. Okay. That beats shoveling our bucks off to George W.B.
Then my daughter wandered in and asked me to help her with her high school economics homework. “Explain taxes to me.”
“Okay. Here is how taxes now work in America. Remember the season finale of CSI? When Stokes was buried alive in the coffin and the bad guy demanded the ransom? That’s what our tax structure is now like. We are being buried alive by Bush’s new tax laws and our ransom money is going to the corporations who don’t have to pay a thing. They just sit around and wait for Katherine to make the drop.”
Whether we switch to Joe’s hot new transaction fee idea or do something else, it’s time to clean up this bloody income tax crime scene. It’s time to get someone like Katherine to bust the chops of those ransom-charging Diebold-powered kidnappers in the White House and Congress and put someone who knows what they are doing in charge of collecting our taxes. “But who?” you may ask. “Katherine?” No. Me!
Jane Stillwater is a regular columnist for Novakeo.com
She can be reached at
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