Ah, tax season. This is the time of year when most Americans find themselves face to face with the sheer heavy-handed ineptitude of federal bureaucracy. I’m certainly a big believer in rendering unto Caesar, but we happen to live in a society in which we’re allowed to disagree with Caesar. So, if it please you, I have the following grumblings when it comes to taxes.
Higher taxes mean just one thing: a bigger, more wasteful government. Though many conservatives talk about small government as if Ronald Reagan invented the idea, the majority of Americans have always, for the most part, supported smaller government and lower taxes. I know the bills need to be paid, but I have philosophical reservations about imposing a tax on somebody’s very livelihood in order to support big government.
The federal government used a temporary income tax to pay for the Civil War. The income tax as we know it today wasn’t implemented until the Wilson administration. Until that time, the federal government paid its bills primarily with tariff revenue. With the rise of globalization and the attendant decrease in tariffs, together with the increasingly gluttonous appetite of government in a post-Teddy Roosevelt America, a tax on productive labor sounded like a good idea to somebody.
So to those who oppose globalization, may I suggest you also oppose the income tax, and maybe you’ll pick up a few more supporters. It’s a reactionary idea, perhaps, but protectionism itself is kind of reactionary, so there you have it.
And I just can’t stand all the H&R Block commercials this time of year. H&R Block is the second biggest sucker’s bet in the tax business.
If your tax situation is complicated enough that you can’t just fill in the forms by following the instruction manual, then you probably need a real accountant. If you don’t need a real accountant, then there’s absolutely no reason to pay someone else to basically do the work of a well-trained chimpanzee by filling in the forms exactly the way the instruction manual says.
But that’s not where H&R Block makes its real money. It make its real money from advance refund checks, which is the first biggest sucker’s bet in the tax business.
Speaking of refunds, sometimes I think I’m the only person left alive who isn’t happy to receive a big refund. People jump up and down in excitement about their refunds. It’s your money! You earned it a while ago, but you’re just receiving it now.
Nobody’s giving you money. They’re just giving your money back, with no interest. The bigger your refund, the more of your own hard-earned money has been sitting in the not-so-capable hands of the government being ravaged by inflation without a penny of interest to show for it. The joke’s on you.
On my W-4, I try to get as small a refund as possible. Even more preferable is to have no refund at all. That way, you pay what you owe when you owe it — not a penny more and not a day earlier.
When you do have to calculate your refund, though, notice how on the Form 1040, Line 72a asks you how much of the overpaid amount you’d like refunded to you. Umm … all of it? Is this a trick question? Is there anyone who really falls for this and decides that this year they feel like paying a little extra tax? Surely they don’t really think we’re that stupid. Do they?
For all my grumbling, I don’t agree with those who advocate non-payment of income tax as a form of protest or civil disobedience. I definitely do not agree with everything for which the government uses my money, and governmental waste infuriates me to no end. Nevertheless, whether I like it or not, I’m paying no more and no less than what our elected representatives have decided upon, which has not always been the case for citizens of the American nation.
I may not like the tax; I may vigorously disagree with the tax and use my freedom of speech to express this view; but, come tax season, I pay up just like everybody else. We do, after all, have taxation with representation. For my money, though, I’d like to see a little less taxation and a little more representation. But maybe that’s just me.

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