It’s a civic duty to pay one’s taxes, and like most Americans, I look forward to April 15th when I can take pride in contributing my share to pay for the government’s fine work.
–Said no taxpayer ever
Of the few things Americans can agree upon, Brookings Institute Fellow Vanessa Williamson says it’s that we love us some taxes.* No, seriously.
Pollsters have been asking Americans whether “it is every American’s civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes.” Every year, about nine in 10 Americans agree with that sentiment. In 2009, 3 percent of respondents disagreed. That level of accord is very rare. To give you a point of reference: About 6 percent of Americans think the Apollo 11 moon landing was faked. On the civic responsibility of taxpaying, Americans are about as close to consensus as they ever get.
This is a magnificent example of the efficacy of statistics. The numbers don’t lie, and tell you whatever you want them to. Williamson’s contention is that Americans like paying taxes. We consider it a civic duty. We do it because we believe in our nation and feel a duty to support our government and fellow citizens.
For six years, I have studied Americans’ attitudes about taxes as they reveal them in surveys, interviews, public statements and the voting booth. The data are clear: Americans do not think it’s smart to avoid your taxes; they think it’s unethical.
Did someone drop Williamson on her head as a child? This isn’t even good sophistry.
The social norm of taxpaying is one reason tax compliance in the United States is very high by international standards. Certainly our system of tax withholding and reporting is crucial to ensuring tax money is collected. Nonetheless, taking account of the actual risks of being caught and fined by the I.R.S., economists have suggested that most individuals, behaving rationally, would evade their taxes entirely. But in reality, more than 140 million households file their taxes every year, and about 83 percent of the total tax liability is paid to the I.R.S. on time. Social scientists studying tax compliance explain this paradox by saying Americans have a culture of high “tax morale.”
Williamson conflates evasion with avoidance. Evasion is breaking the law, and the IRS has weapons of mass destruction to assure that if you’re caught doing so, the consequences will be dire. Avoidance, on the other hand, is using the law to one’s advantage to pay the least amount of taxes one lawfully can. Do you know anybody who says, “I could take this deduction and pay less taxes, but, I dunno, it just feels so wrong, so Ima just pay more taxes and feel all good about myself”?
This does not mean Americans are always happy with their taxes. Of course not. But what really upsets people about the United States tax system is tax returns like Donald Trump’s.
Are always happy? The next layer of conflation is tossed in for the Trump attack, but note the Gertruding first. Williamson claims she isn’t saying “Americans are always happy with their taxes.” Are they ever happy? Is anyone happy to pay taxes? Happy?
Among the many things people despise about taxes is the belief that our ridiculously prolix tax code is replete with loopholes and givebacks that allow the fabulously wealthy to game the system in ways other citizens cannot. We often characterize it as their not paying their fair share, and blame them for government’s creation of laws and rules that only the wealthy can enjoy. There is an aphorism for this: misery loves company.
We hate paying taxes, and we doubly hate that we have to pay while other people, richer people, can game the system to avoid paying when we cannot.
Asked what bothers them most about taxes, Americans overwhelmingly say the feeling that the wealthy and corporations are not paying their fair share. This is the top issue for nearly two-thirds of Americans. In contrast, 8 percent of Americans say that their biggest concern is the amount they personally pay in taxes. What upsets most people about taxes is not the amount they contribute. They are angry about the amount that the wealthy can avoid contributing.
The suggestion is that Americans are fine with the amount they pay in taxes. It’s a reflection of a deliberate misread of relativity. Income taxes are a fixture of the system, for better or worse. There’s a reason Benjamin Franklin wrote “nothing is certain but death and taxes.” We accept the premises that taxes are a necessity, but the sense of unfairness is not.
None of this, however, suggests Williamson’s primary contention, that it’s not smart for a wealthy person to avail himself of the laws that allow for him to avoid paying taxes, or the secondary contention, that we’re a nation of happy idiots who are just fine with sending Uncle Sam money on Tax Day because it makes us feel all civic-y.
If each of us could pull off a Trump and legally pay no taxes, you bet your butt we would. Our resentment is because we can’t. Nowhere in Williamson’s weasel words can “jealousy” be found. But there is a far more nefarious aspect to her scheme.
There is a political view of the American public that they are a cash machine for good government causes, and it serves that view to promote the belief that we’re all fine with government spending to feed the poor and save puppies from misery. Nobody talks about the cost for a bunker buster bomb, but we hear plenty about the horror of being a citizen of another country under assault. Don’t even mention the national debt, that we’ve been selling our children’s souls for years to pretend that the taxes we pay cover the costs we happily incur.
No political candidate runs for office on the promise of raising everyone’s taxes because Americans feel great about performing our civic duty. The argument is to screw the minority, the wealthy,** so that the rest of us aren’t the only ones getting screwed by a wasteful government. We can well disagree about the efficacy of tax breaks for the rich, but to contend that the rest of us want to throw a party for the government on April 15th is sheer lunacy. Nobody believes the government is doing a good job spending our money. If we had a choice, we wouldn’t pay any taxes either. Because it’s the smart thing to do.
*This op-ed was likely planned in advance of Trump’s confession of sexual assault and in anticipation of the second presidential debate as part of the New York Times’ 10,000 Trump Editorials Series. In fairness, it has also posted two editorials extolling the virtues of Hillary Clinton as a historic candidate for being the wife of a former president a woman.
**What if the minority wasn’t the “wealthy,” a dubious characterization in itself, but cisheteronormative white males? After all, since cis white males enjoy undeserved privilege, wouldn’t it be perfectly reasonable for them to contribute extra to compensate for their good fortune of being born straight, white and male?
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You mean, ” a cisheteronormative white female”! Who also happens to be the one and only wife of a former president. But that of course is a mere coincidence, which studies show, the Amerikan taxpayers are overwhelmingly comfortable with.
P.S., Hillary is no Maggie Thatcher! Nor was she a good substitute for Condosleaza Rice, or MadElleine AllBright. (And Donald is no Dwight Eisenhower. The End is Near.)
“Said no taxpayer ever”.. Love it!
Don’t these people know the top 10% of earners in the USA pay 68% of the Federal Income tax?? How much do they want them to pay? All of it?
In a similar argument the NZ Libertarianz Party set up a special bank account so people could pay extra tax voluntarily, after some well-known Socialist said he would be happy to pay more tax.
It remained empty of course, Socialists are always happy for people to pay more tax, so long as its other people.
As scott said they want them to pay ” their fair share”
68% seems high until you realize how much wealth they control. Cnn ran a piece in august saying that same top 10% controls 76% of americas wealth.
There was a time when Americans admired the wealthy for having accomplished what they too hoped to accomplish one day. The wealthy control wealth? That’s the way capitalism is supposed to work. Taxes involve a great many other concerns, but it’s not a crime to be wealthy.
If there was a flat tax, it would all be made fair by one calculus. But then, the not-as-yet-wealthy don’t care for that idea either because it’s regressive. They’re very hard to please.
Except they don’t. CNN’s numbers were… Less than accurate.
“Don’t these people know the top 10% of earners in the USA pay 68% of the Federal Income tax??”
Even if that’s completely true (and I have no idea whether it is or not) that statement means absolutely nothing and tells absolutely nothing. List the percentage of total income the top 10% of earners make and you’re a little closer to having a useful statistic.
We’re veering off into the abyss now. None of this bears upon the wealthy using existing tax law to their advantage. None of this makes them wrong to do so, even though it pisses off those who can’t take advantage of the available laws to avoid paying taxes, but would if they could.
“Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.”
[Commissioner v. Newman, 159 F.2d 848, 851 (2d Cir. 1947) – dissenting opinion]
That was so long ago. Things are totally different now. Don’t you send in your voluntary contribution whenever the civic mood strikes?
Ok fine, but but which republican demagogue was in power during the 90’s, when Trump and his ilk were able to buy such influence from the oval to reap massive benefits from the tax code? We need to make sure such people never get into power again.
The 80s. The 70s. The 60s. The tax code is for social engineering.
Tax loopholes are like 4th Amendment technicalities: they’re what other people use.
I’m availing myself of my rights.
So said Irwin Schiff?
In response to your introduction but not to your point, in 1942 Ogden Nash wrote “To the Commissioner of Internal Revenue,” expressing his eagerness to pay taxes. His poem was humorous but not ironic: the “fine work” for which he wanted the government to use the money was destroying Japan. In large part because it now seems so unexpected from Nash, it gives insight into American attitudes following Pearl Harbor.
Well then.
“Pollsters have been asking Americans whether “it is every American’s civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes.” Every year, about nine in 10 Americans agree with that sentiment.”
“Asked what bothers them most about taxes, Americans overwhelmingly say the feeling that the wealthy and corporations are not paying their fair share….What upsets most people about taxes is not the amount they contribute. They are angry about the amount that the wealthy can avoid contributing.”
If these are the only measures Williamson is using, and if from these measures she’s coming to the conclusion that Americans generally are supportive of taxation on the whole, there’s something seriously wrong here. The survey question she quotes in full is awful.* What’s a “fair share” of taxes? Who determines what that “fair share” is? Does every respondent agree on what is meant by a “fair share?” Even if they do, does “fair share” mean the same thing to them as it does to the researcher? What does “civic duty” mean? How does its meaning interact with the meaning of “fair?” What does it mean to agree with the statement? Does it mean that the respondent thinks that paying taxes in general is a civic good? Or, as you suggest, does it mean that if the respondent has to pay taxes then everyone else should, too? Even if it is the former, why might a respondent think that paying taxes is a “civic duty?” Because taxation is a morally correct thing for governments to do? Because, even if taxation is not morally correct, citizens still have a duty to follow the law? A combination of the two? Some other reason? Does every respondent have the same reason for agreeing with the statement? Even if they do, is it the same reason that the researcher has?
I won’t go into the problems with the second measure, since, not having seen the survey item(s), I’d just be repeating what you had to say. But I’d expect that there are similar problems of vagueness in the wording of that item (or those items), as well. Like I said, if these are her only measures, Williamson simply isn’t getting the data she thinks she’s getting.
*Full disclosure: I’m a qualitative researcher, partially because I think most survey questions about anything interesting are awful. Surveys just can’t get inside people’s heads. You have no idea how people are interpreting your statements or questions.
Williamson is seeing what she wants to see. That’s one of the beauties of poor quality data: believing is seeing.
Just some real world experience to help flesh out the insanity quoted above (not what SHG said, the other guys, though SHG might well be nuts) and, admittedly, this is completely anecdotal (if 500 clients a year for 20 years can be called “anecdotal”)…
Everyone thinks they are paying more than other people in their situation.
Everyone thinks they pay too much (and don’t make “a lot” of money – this everyone ranges from $5,000 a year to $2,000,000 a year in income)
Most people need to be convinced to take all deductions legally allowed out of fear of the IRS
A majority would cheat if they knew they wouldn’t get caught
Most think there are “magic” deductions that only some people know about
NOBODY likes owing at the end of the year – even if they planned it that way
And just to be clear – all the conspiracy theorists about why the income tax is illegal and you don’t have to pay are completely full of shit (just included this because people are gullible and this can’t be stated enough.)
And while I’m on the subject, the IRS didn’t call you…really.
Exactly. It’s not at all mutually exclusive.
One of my uncles, God be due to him, actually subscribed to that “civic duty” thing. I got used to diligently paying my taxes when I handled cases against the IRS and state taxing agencies. Believe me, if you’re going to do that work, you better keep your personal taxes in order.
https://youtu.be/SzTQmcLx03U
I don’t know.. about the vacuumed.
The switches concern me.
I’m still stuck at someone conflating “believes paying taxes to be a civic *duty*” and “likes paying taxes”. WTF?
I have a non-civic duty to take out the garbage regularly and wash the dishes, or the house gets really nasty, but that doesn’t mean I *like* doing it.
I’m not here to judge what might constitute a ‘fair share’ of taxes. My complaint is that they need to pay A SHARE of taxes. A few years ago, the massive multi-billion dollar corporation that is GE managed to not only pay NO taxes, they actually got paid BY the government. This concerns me because I live in an area dominated by GE. The community I grew up in was built by them over 90 years ago for worker housing, yet they contribute absolutely zero to the community in taxes, the school here is so poor they couldn’t maintain the building, so they had to cordon off the bad part with a leaking roof, and just make do with what they had. As for my own income tax, I do not mind paying taxes, with them I buy civilization.