The majority of working Americans never have a chance to pay their taxes because they are deducted in advance of their paychecks being received. This is usually the case for everyone except a small percentage of people that are subject to paying estimated taxes through the year or any year-end settlements with the IRS. Being that our Government takes possession of your money prior to its receipt makes you wonder about the true ownership of that money. It is a small distinction to draw that effectively sets the balance of power in the relationship and should make you question who really owns your labor and efforts. Are you really paying your taxes, or is the Government taking what they deem to be their share and giving you what is leftover? It is well conceived on their part to not only position themselves to have a senior claim on your earning potential, but they also divert your mind from your money, thus you end up paying little attention to the tax collection process. The thought here is the classic out of sight out of mind notion that fosters the feeling that you are not really paying, maybe even viewing the money as not belonging to you. In fact, many people cheer when year-end settlements provide a tax refund of what should have been their own money all along. This concept works so well that many view a refund as a gift that falls from the heavens. The true value established is the ability of the Government to slowly ratchet up taxes over the years with hardly a notice because it is done incrementally, and it is spread out over the year to go virtually unnoticed as to its actual amount. Accordingly, taxpayers give little attention to how much is being taken from them and often consider that the money is not really theirs to begin with.

It is often quoted that the average taxpayer has to work full-time well into the month of May each year just to earn the amount of taxes that are taken for that year. It makes you wonder how sensitive people would be to the taxes they are paying if they had to actually work until May 15th each year to pay for governmental services before they were allowed to receive their first penny. My guess is there would have been an uprising long ago concerning how that money is being spent, but painlessly deducting it over the year allows them to incrementally collect more money by masking the full impact, and the ease of doing so only encourages its irresponsible usage. Another thought to focus attention on the actual tax burden being imposed is for taxpayers to receive their full pay and subsequently write a check each month for taxes owed to the IRS, which by the way would never happen because our Government does not trust its citizens to make the payments. Either of these thoughts would really emphasize the actuality of genuinely “paying taxes” with either money or labor, and it would likely motivate people to care more about how that money is being managed while controlling the amount of taxes being collected. The Government surely prefers the current collection process in order to limit any resistance that would be created if taxpayers started becoming more mindful of the actual totality of the tax burden imposed upon them. It is easy to see how our current system has served to facilitate the big Government monstrosity we are dealing with today. The current method of tax collection will very likely remain unchanged due to its effectiveness for the Treasury, but it should certainly make one contemplate the points made herein.