Kerby Anderson

Today your income taxes are due. Of course, those are just some of the taxes you pay each year. This increasing list of taxes we pay are why Kevin Williamson argues that “We Have Enough Taxes.” He wrote his column because President Biden has been proposing a “billionaires’ tax” that would essentially tax imaginary income. You pay capital gains taxes on income you receive. You don’t pay taxes on assets that increase in value that you have not received as income. Biden wants to change that. This is a bad idea for many reasons. First, the value of assets not only go up; they also go down. Think of the stock market. Think of the estimated value of a home that then deceases significantly during a housing collapse. Second, the value of an asset can best be assigned when a sale is made. As I said in a commentary recently, my kids used to ask me what something was worth. My standard answer was “it’s only worth what another person will pay for it.” Kevin Williamson also raises another question about the sheer number of taxes. There are taxes on incomes, payroll, capital gains, dividends, tariffs, estates, gasoline, and diesel, along with tobacco excises, liquor excises, Affordable Care Act excises, and much more. We aren’t just talking about the taxes we need to pay today, we are paying taxes all the time, often in ways we don’t notice. I wonder if this is by design. In my previous commentary, I asked you to imagine what would happen if we had to pay all our taxes in one lump sum. We would probably have a tax revolt. But when we pay lots of taxes every day and have taxes deducted from our paychecks, we don’t notice. But we should.