Conservatives worship the state at tax time
Inside Liberty Watch Today - April 17, 2006

With April 15th falling on a Saturday, today is the day to file your tax return or extension and of course, "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's." Most rational people loath the day taxes are due as it is the day that the federal government reaches out and touches us in a very personal way. You are forced to hand over a portion of your private property, the sweat of your brow, to a bloated government that goes through the unimaginable sum of two and a half trillion dollars each year.

There are many dim bulbs out there for which April 15th means nothing. Their taxes were withheld all year long and they are dancing for joy that they are getting a refund, as if their benevolent government is handing them free money. These folks just can't connect the dots that they gave the creeps in Washington an interest free loan and that the money was theirs in the first place.

This brings us to a study just released from the Pew Research Center. The researchers at Pew surveyed over 1500 people on a variety of issues to learn what activities people think are morally wrong. Toping the list of immoral behavior unsurprisingly was married people having an affair. Nearly nine out of ten people (88%) believe that activity to be morally objectionable. But in close second comes, not reporting all income on your taxes. Eight out of ten people (79%) believe this to be immoral.

Now there is no question that taxes are taken by force. And it is morally wrong to take a person's property against their will. It is called theft when a private citizen steals another private citizen's personal property. When government does it, it is called taxation. Thus, taxation is theft. But, leaving that aside, even those who support government, either, big, little or in between, hire accountants to lower their tax hit. This country was born out of a tax revolt. Tax protests are as American as baseball and apple pie. Remember the Boston Tea Party and the Whiskey Rebellion?

Has the average American become so debauched that they now believe not declaring all of one's income is morally wrong? Good grief. And these people vote. No wonder we are sliding toward totalitarianism. Remember, Germans approved overwhelmingly (90% of the electorate) to placing Adolph Hitler in the combined role of the highest offices in state, military and the National Socialist German Workers Party. The referendum vote gave Hitler supreme rule that could not be legally challenged. What's next for a morally reprehensible crime in America, leaving the house without one's national ID card?

Interestingly, the more church-going the person surveyed, the more likely the response was that not reporting income was morally wrong. White evangelical Protestants evidently worship the state first and foremost because 92 percent of those folks think not reporting income is immoral. Republicans were right behind with 87 percent. And get this, eighty-six (86) per cent of conservatives believe under reporting income is morally wrong, while only 68 per cent of liberals do. This explains everything. No wonder I get so much negative feed back from church-going Republicans. Conservative, evangelical Republicans aren't interested in liberty after all.

Conservative Republicans evidently haven't been paying attention to how screwed up the present tax system is. What's so moral about everyone spending on average 28 hours and 30 minutes on preparing tax returns? And what are the odds of getting the correct amount of tax due? A fictional tax return given by Money magazine to forty-five tax preparers resulted in forty-five different calculations of the correct amount of tax due. IRS employees don't even give the same answers to tax questions. In his new book pushing a flat tax, Steve Forbes mentions a 2003 Treasury Department study that found callers to the IRS toll-free help lines "gave the wrong answers to tax-related questions more than 25 percent of the time."

At first glance, the Pew survey might give one reason for hope, albeit very slight. Fewer people between the ages 18 and 49 thought not reporting all income immoral-74 per cent--compared to 88 per cent of those 65 and over. But, this makes sense because many of those 65 and over consume taxes while working people between 18 and 49 pay taxes. Over time the disparity between those groups will likely be constant.

Taxes and those who support them serve to drive a sane man to drink. Whoops, it turns out that drinking alcohol excessively came in third in the Pew survey of immoral activities, just behind not reporting income. Let's drink to saving the souls of evangelical conservative Republicans anyway. They need it.


Doug French, Liberty Watch Columnist