March 25, 2012

COLUMBUS: This is income tax paying season. It opens right at the end of winter and lasts until April 15. Even thinking about is exhausting. In fact, to save my energy I’m turning the rest of this column over to Will Rogers. (These quotes on taxes are from 1923 to 1935. All these years later, has anything changed?)
“This is income tax paying  day. There is going to be no attempt at humor, for it would be mighty forced. No two can agree on what is deductible. When it’s made out you don’t know if you are a crook or martyr. It’s made more liars out of the American people than golf.  By the way, did you charge off money given to the Democratic campaign? You could; it’s a legitimate charity, not organized but a charity nevertheless.
No one that made enough to pay a tax this year (1931) should kick. In fact it’s increased taxes on incomes of over one hundred thousand net where the money should come from to supply work during slack time.
Our financial ills will never be settled till you fix it so every man will pay an income tax on what he earns, be it a farm, grocery store or municipal or government bonds.
You can’t legitimately kick on income tax, for it’s on what you have made. You have already made it. But, look at land, farms, homes, stores, vacant lots. You pay year after year on them whether you make it or not. Every land or property owner in America would be tickled to death to pay 45 percent of his profits, if he didn’t have to pay anything if he didn’t make it.
I have always claimed that the farmer will get no relief by legislation, for there is more people eating than there is raising, so he is a minority before he starts. His relief should come through taxes. When a farm don’t (make) anything, it shouldn’t be taxed.
We got a long-sighted government. When everybody has got money they cut the taxes, and when they’re broke they raise ’em.
We owe more money than any Nation in the World, and WE ARE LOWERING TAXES (1926). When is the time to pay off a debt if it is not when you are doing well? Seventy percent of every dollar paid in the way of taxes goes to just the keeping up the interest… Why don’t we do our best to try and cut down the principal, so it will lower that tremendous interest?
There is a tremendous movement on to get lower taxes on earned incomes. Then will come the real problem, “Who among us on salary are earning our income?”
There is some talk of lowering it, and they will have to.  People are not making enough to pay it.
Say did you read in the papers about a bunch of Women up in British Columbia as a protest against high taxes, sit out in the open naked, and they wouldn’t put their clothes on? The authorities finally turned a sprayer on ’em. That may lead into quite a thing. Woman comes into the tax office nude, saying I won’t pay. Well they can’t search her and get anything. It sounds great. How far is it to British Columbia?”