Why nobody likes taxes

Why nobody likes taxes

Why nobody likes taxes

Now that's a fairly safe statement to make. I know I don't. One of the reasons I moved back to the US from Canada, is that Americans pay far, far fewer taxes than Canadians do. In fact, it seems to be part of the American dream to avoid paying any taxes. We don't want to pay them on the Internet. Many states don't want their citizens to pay state taxes. And President George W. Bush just pushed through a huge federal income tax cut.

And no doubt there are still people who think we pay too many taxes. But the people of Braintree, Massachusetts, might be thinking differently. Braintree has a problem. Not once in the past two decades did the town pass resolutions that overrode Proposition 2the law that says the town government cannot raise each year's tax levy more than 2 ~T percent above the previous year's charges. Nor did they float any bonds to pay for debt. Braintree is also a fairly bustling commercial town. Which mean that resident tax rates were among the lowest in the Boston area.

But there's one problem. Braintree is, well, falling part. Especially its schools. While everybody was patting himself or herself on the back for keeping taxes down, school, roads, bridges and the like were growing older and weren't receiving the attention they needed. But even if they did get the attention, not much could be done because there wasn't enough money in the town's kitty to pay for needed repairs. But, as my mother would say, one can only ignore the elephant in the living room for so long. And now it's time to pay up. The school department wants $ 100 million to fix the schools. Millions more will be needed for road repairs and fixing the town's deteriorating water and sewer lines.

Boy, oh boy, people are going to have SOME kind of tax bill in Braintree this year. And probably for the next few years as well. And don't forget, this situation affects more than just the town's infrastructure. Real estate prices will suffer as well. Who wants to move to a town with crumbling schools, bad roads, and questionable water.

There is a lesson in all this not paying enough tax is just as bad as paying too much tax. There are some people in the US who point out that all tax money should be given back to individuals, not the various branches of government. It's our money, they cry. In one way, I agree with them. It is our money. But the fact they conveniently forget or ignore is that the money the government keeps is "our" money as well. That's because it pays for OUR schools, OUR roads, OUR military, OUR communities in need of help after events like floods or other disasters.

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