Truth in taxation
I found an interesting governmental missive in my mailbox a few days ago.
Right at the top there was good, good news: “This is not a bill. Do not pay.” A bit further down, the news wasn’t quite so unabashedly rosy – it was my proposed property tax bill for the upcoming tax year.
And happy holidays to you too…
It’s a Minnesota pre-Christmas tradition. The mailing of the Truth in Taxation statements – a reminder that our elected friends and neighbors are planning to dip into our wallets and bank accounts and that we, as the dipped, have an annual opportunity to show up and scream bloody hell if we feel we’re getting overcharged, shortchanged or an otherwise feel we’re receiving a poor return on our civic investment … not that anything will likely change, but that right is enshrined in law if we so desire to exercise it.
I have to say “Truth in Taxation” does have a nice ring to it, redolent of 1776, Patrick Henry and “No taxation without representation.” It’s all Bunker Hill, Betsy Ross and Valley Forge, except for one thing … it’s not the whole truth.
That statement tells us what we pay, but that doesn’t go far enough. If it were to be the whole truth, that bit of government paperwork look a bit more like a Walmart sales slip – not just telling us what we owe, but itemizing what our money is paying for.
That might turn out to be an unexpectedly long list.
Just consider my Sunday. I can’t blame the government for the weather, although I have been paying taxes so the National Weather Service can warn me of when I can expect outdoor conditions to be unfit for man or beast.
Be that as it may, I’d just finished shoveling a couple inches of congealing slush off my sidewalk when the city plow – paid for in part by my taxes – came swooping past to refill the curb cuts I’d just so laboriously shoveled out. I was momentarily quite displeased with my investment – a displeasure which quite thoroughly dissipated a bit later when, too lazy to fix my own supper, I headed out to pick up a pizza and found the streets all the way from here to there quite nicely cleared of snow, sanded and salted and suitable for safe travel – all compliments of that same tax-funded city street department.
Oh yeah, and that pizza? I could eat it with confidence (and hot peppers) thanks to the tax-funded health inspector who offered official assurance that the restaurant kitchen was doubtless cleaner than my own. And, of course, in the unlikely instance that I might be afflicted with some strange digestive malady, the Medicate card in my wallet would see to it that a taxpayer-certified health care professional would see to it and, if so indicated, prescribe an federally approved remedy to return me to beaming good health.
All in all, not a bad return on my investment – and that’s just for one short, uneventful Sunday afternoon.
Now I’m not going to pretend that when I’m presented with my tax bill I won’t grouse and complain right along with the best of ‘em. I mean, property tax, sales tax, income tax, gas tax, excise tax – 2 percent here, 6 percent there. Write a check for this, get withheld for that. It’s … it’s … taxing.
Then again, so are a lot of things.
Like potholes.
If it weren’t for that tax bill, who’s gonna fill ‘em?
Or cut the grass in the park? Clean the toilets at the swimming pool? Put out the blaze when your house catches fire? Teach your kid to read? Bury the guy who dies with no family and no money?
Who pays for all those things we need to do, but can’t or would rather not do for ourselves?
We all do. And if we don’t, they won’t get done.
And that, my friends, is the real truth of taxation.