Letter to the Editor,
As I asserted before, our leaders control us when they use the tax code to encourage some activity and discourage others. If we were to eliminate income tax deductions (incentives) what are we talking about? (I will limit this discussion to the federal income tax, as state business, property, and sales taxes would be too complicated for this space).
For most of us, who go to work and receive a paycheck, at the beginning of tax reporting cycle, our employer provides us (and the IRS) with a W-2 form, which provide information about how much income they paid us, and withholdings they paid the federal government for Social Security and Medicare. The income number might be reduced if we participate in tax deferred investments such as 401k or 403b retirement programs, with additional employer contributions.
To make the 1040 form less complicated, and get the government out of making moral and financial decisions for us, we should eliminate the deduction sections of the 1040 form. Then, we would buy stuff or engage in what we believed in because it fits our lifestyle and values, not because government leaders say these things are good.
This begs the question of what our leaders agendas are and how vulnerable are those to change with the winds of election cycles. One group wants to promote a Green New Deal, thereby giving incentives to buying electric vehicles and planting solar panels or wind turbines in fields and mountain tops. Another group want to be friendly with coal and natural gas by turning mountains and valleys into data centers and micro-grid facilities. One group wants to encourage LGBTQ+ by allowing same sex couples, and trans-folks, to have legal rights to ownership, contracts, inheritance, etc. One groups wants to promote men and women to marry, have sex and procreate, least they be replaced by immigrants (watch out for all those Irish and Italian Catholics coming through Ellis Island and taking over New York, Boston, and Chicago).
All of this leads to tax breaks for EV’s, solar wind farms, or unleashing the power of coal and natural gas, or requiring marriage rights reciprocity between states, allowing joint tax form filings and child credits, buy the American dream (house, along with lots of appliances and stuff to fill the closets), and give to one’s favorite virtue-naming organization or faith community.
What might be some undesirable consequences of these tax code bennies?
Folks end up underwater on their home mortgage because they bought more house than they could afford because they could get the interest deducted on their 1040 Schedule A form?
Folks have to buy a Chevy bumper sticker to hide their Tesla logo?
Good quality farm land it taken out of running cattle or growing crops in order to sprout energy absorbing solar panels or data centers? Wind farms get built in the middle of residential zones?
Charitable organizations buy office buildings near Washington, D.C. to be near the hub of power, and their activity is tax exempt because they meet the criteria to be considered Social Welfare Organizations, with 501(c)4 status?
Billionaires shelter their assets by transferring them to Foundations, with 501(c)3 status, which promote whatever the billionaire wants (usually funneling money back to their business, such as Bill Gate’s foundations that tackles good causes with Microsoft products, go figure)?
Church organizations, forgetting that the “church” is the followers of The Way not the church building, write off the building and property, or accept donations of property and stocks (the Diocese of Wheeling was one of the wealthiest in the US Catholic Church for a time after a patron bequeathed them oil wells)?
If you think that I am going after faith communities by suggesting that their assets be taxed as any business would, look back to President Ulysses Grant, who urged Congress in 1875 to pass laws for “taxation of all property equally, whether church or corporation”. In 1924, Rupert Hughes, historian and writer, advocated for taxation of church property which sat idly all week, or open their buildings up for public schools to relieve that lack of school buildings at the time.
A century later, billions of property tax value is locked up by charitable organizations under the assumption that they are doing good, and churches under the assumption that Jesus’ message would evaporate if they were not given a tax write-off. Jesus preached in fields, hills tops, as well as in synagogues, and his message is still around. I wonder what Joseph thought about census taxes in the Roman Empire when he took his fiancee to Bethlehem to be counted?
If we got married for the sake of our love and commitment, and reared children for the sake of bringing up a new generation, and purchased a home to live in, and bought a vehicle that met our transportation desires, and took care of our health for a long and productive life, and cared for our neighbors so they could care for us, and worshiped in a beautify building or our homes as the Spirit moved us, and gave freely to causes we believe in, without concern for what incentive our government will offer us on April 15th…
We would be much more free.
Oscar Larson
Baker, WV
