The Obligatory Blog on Taxes

It happened. For the first time ever! Turns out, I'm going to owe Uncle Sam a few sheckles come April.

Oh, I wined. Oh, I looked up and down that damn 1040 form looking for something that may have hinted at a math error or a missed deduction, anything! Nothing. Nada. Nichevo.

Am I the least bit thrilled about this? NO!

Is it going to feel good to write that check in April? NO!

Am I mad as hell and not going to take it anymore? Not a bit.

For all the complaining we the people love to do about taxation, the US of A remains a relatively low tax country. Be that too, this probably comes at our fiscal peril. It's tough to pay for two wars, a stimulus package, bank bailouts, auto-maker bailouts, etc, etc, all on an economy that has 10% unemployment and has seemingly flat-lined. Thank goodness the poor countries of the world are willing to lend us money so we can indulge in these little excesses from time to time.

Do I think that we need to watch what we borrow money for? Absolutely. Much of the aforementioned pork makes me want to commit hari kari. I'm sure I could have a hey-day with the stimulus package if I really looked at it line by line, let alone all the money for defunct auto-makers who haven't rolled out a cutting edge vehicle since the 1970's. (I own a 2004 Chevy BTW, and I am currently examing my options for un-owning the POS and never buying another.) But one thing I don't do is look at my tax bill and think "Damn, I shouldn't have to pay this!"

The fact of the matter is this: Taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized country. Personally, I like public education even though I acknowledge that it isn't perfect. I like my local and state police officers giving tickets to bad drivers, although I know for sure that I don't deserve the ticket they may have given me. I like the highways I drive on, even though I wish there weren't so many damn cars on them. I like having the worlds most bad-ass military protecting me from harm, even though I wish we weren't paying them to hunt down a man with a dialysis machine connected to what must be the worlds longest extention cord running through the mountains of Afghanistan.

I wouldn't give up any of these things if it meant that I had to pay no taxes at all.

According to the Forbes "Tax Misery" index from April 2008, the lowest taxed countries in the world are:
1) Qatar (You know how wonderful those petro-states are!)
2) United Arab Emirates (FYI, if you Google the terms 'UAE' and 'bankrupt' you get 14.8 million hits, as opposed to the 2.4 million you get when you Google 'USA' and 'bankrupt'.)
3) Hong Kong (Hong Kong = China, and China = 3rd most taxed country in the world according to this same article. Does that strike anyone else as odd?)
4) Georgia (A miracle of post-Soviet economic reform, two significant parts of which would rather be part of Russia)
5) Macedonia (They're in NATO now, so we can officially forget about about the fact that they have one of the lowest levels of GDP per capita in Europe)

So, judging by Forbes title, I'm guessing that these 5 countries are the happiest in the world, right? I mean, they are the lowest taxed and all? Well, according to none other than Forbes, in an article released about a week after the first one I mentioned, they list the happiest nations in the world:
1) Denmark (Really, really, high taxes BTW....about 50 percent or so)
2) Switzerland (Like Denmark, not a Forbes Top 5, but pretty high taxes all the same)
3) Austria (See comment about Switzerland, but with a really hot Sound of Music-era Julie Andrews roaming the hill side)
4) Iceland (High taxes AND bankrupt...doesn't sound good to me but to each their own)
5) Finland (See Denmark, but colder)

I'm going to go out on a limb here and, based upon what I read, make an analytical assessment:

According to Forbes magazine, the "Tax Misery" index is a complete and utter misnomer because the some of the worlds highest taxed countries are also the happiest.

I have a theory. You see, in Denmark and Finland and Switzerland and Austria and probably even bankrupt Iceland, there are services that people get that in exchange for their taxes that, for all practical purposes, work about the way they were intended. People get decent, if not cutting edge healthcare. People work short days, and get 5 or 6 weeks of vacation....every year! People get educated, and while the system is more 'socialist' than ours, there is a bit of evidence to indicate that the end product is better. Something tells me that it is those things, NOT low taxes, that make a happy country.

Of course, in the United States, instead healthcare, lots of vacation time and an education that teaches you to think, we get a reanimated General Motors and Chrysler, a gluttonous AIG, and lots of talk about healthcare that we are told will cost an arm that no one really believes will work very well anyway.

Damn. When you put it that way, maybe I should be more upset about my tax bill.