Saturday, July 14, 2012
Am I Taxed Enough?
I did some back of the envelope calculations recently to estimate what percentage of my income is paid to government in the form of taxes and fees. Here's what I came up with:
Federal Income Tax: 28%
Social Security Tax: 6.2% normally, 4.5% in 2012
Medicare Tax: 1.45%
State Income Tax: 6%
Property Tax: 2.5%
State Sales Tax 1%
State and Federal Gasoline Taxes 1%
Misc. Fees and Taxes .5%
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47.5%
I do live in the People's Republic of Maryland-- state motto: "If you can dream it, we can tax it." The Governor and State Legislators are trying their darnedest to turn Maryland into California or Illinois, and drive all of its productive citizens to more tax-friendly places. I have a middle class income, nothing extravagant for the DC suburbs, so I ask you does government in the aggregate deserve 47% of anyone's wages, regardless of income level? Is it that taxpayers are not paying their fair share, or that government just grows greedier and greedier each year? Once Obamacare kicks in, I expect my overall tax rate to approach 50%. My incentive to earn that more money will be greatly reduced, because if I'm pushed into the next higher income bracket the government will be getting more than 50% of what I earn. And I'll be damned if I am going to hand over more than 50% of my earnings to bureaucrats to fritter away on pet projects to enrich their cronies and buy votes to get themselves reelected.
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I fear that the country is going towards western European model - gas at $7 a gallon, 55% income tax and ~20% sales tax, etc...
ReplyDeleteThe problem is - there will be never enough money, till they balance the budget. We spending more than we earn, so there is no end of tax increases.
There is never enough money to satisfy all the unmet needs that politicians perceive.
DeleteI'd be interested to see you try to put a dollar value to all the government services you get and then see what kind of deal you're getting for your money. i.e. How many miles do you travel on public roads/public transit? How much do you benefit from others using those roads to bring you stuff? How much use have you gotten from the public schools both personally and in having a community of educated young people? How much would police and fire protection cost if you had to hire private services? What's the military protection worth?
ReplyDeleteJust so you can add it up and decide how much is a fair price for the services you're getting, and how much is just spent giving free services to people who pay fewer or no taxes.
That would be a difficult, but interesting exercise to go through. I'm afraid the conclusion would say more about the leanings of the person conducting the study than what the reality is.
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