Two things always come to my mind whenever tax-related things come up.
1) Why can't we just treat everyone equally? If there is going to be an income tax, why can't we just make it a straight income tax. Stop cutting out a gazillion exceptions, one more complicated than the next -- usually in the name of how they are going to induce certain behaviors they think are beneficial (and always getting wrong, because they end up creating problems they didn't foresee). For one thing, you would cut out all of the corruption that has taken hold, of people being able to buy off politicians for legislated tax benefits -- the kinds that have turned our code into a tangled mess that is selectively and unevenly enforced (based on political grudges). And for another, it would make compliance so much easier and save billions of dollars. We waste so much money that could be used way more productively because of this mess we have created.
2) When did this notion take hold of someone not wanting to hand over their income or wealth in taxes make them a bad person or a criminal or somehow suspect? At worst, if you use that tangled tax code we have to minimize your tax burden (to zero if you are able to), all you have done is act within the shirtty tax code and held onto YOUR money. I know others disagree, but to me there is no virtue in handing over what you have earned to some authority that figuratively holds a gun to your head. Why is that virtuous? Especially if you are like me and see budgets of trillions of dollars of runaway bureaucracy, special-interest corruption, interest on runaway debt and unsustainable entitlement schemes that have gotten out of control, being what you are being forced to fund. The populist blather that has led to this notion of "pay your fair share" is beyond me. There is no "fair share," unless you start off from the vantage point of the mob having a claim on what others have earned. And there aren't enough rich people, anyhow, to demonize and pick the pockets of for the mess we have already created. The rhetoric reminds me a bit of Orwell's 1984 where they created a perpetual war to distract the public from reality. We sure have come a long way from the Stamp Act in the mid 1700s, when being forced to pay a tax actually brought about revolt and played a part in leading to a revolution.
