Kerby Anderson

Candidate Joe Biden assured us that in order to pay for all the government spending he proposed, he would only tax the rich. He promised not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 per year. Most of us knew that was not true. But if you still have any doubts, you only need look at the latest proposal to have the IRS and banks spy on you. I am talking about the requirement for banks to report any transaction of $600 or more. If the government were only going after wealthy Americans, you would think that the minimum level would be $1,000 or $5,000. The $600 threshold was certainly a “wake-up call” for middle class Americans. They realize lots of their bank transactions could now come under the scrutiny of the IRS. Few Americans are tax cheats, but most Americans aren’t thrilled about providing such confidential information to the government and wondering what government bureaucrats might do with it. The justification for this intrusion is to close the tax gap and pay for an additional $3.5 trillion in government spending. But we will never be able to close the gap between taxation and government spending. Consider this thought experiment. News outlets now estimate that Elon Musk is the richest American, with an estimated wealth of $200 billion. Imagine he knew he was dying and decided to cash in all of his wealth and donate all of the proceeds to the US government to pay down the national debt. His generous contribution would only cover 0.7 percent of that debt. Even if all 600 billionaires did the same, it would hardly reduce the nations debt in any significant way. These proposed regulations prove to anyone willing to look at them that everyone will pay, not just a few billionaires and millionaires.