Volume 6, Number 13  Friday, April 15, 2005

Nineteen For Me

Never the procrastinator, I was doing my taxes late Thursday night (okay, full disclosure -- last year, I filed my taxes on the 15th, so maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to say “never”) when I realized that I don’t so much mind being taxed.  I mind that I have to do my taxes.

Thanks to my good friends at Turbo Tax, the act has gotten easier the last couple of years, and I suppose that when you’re getting a refund, as I am, you probably shouldn’t complain too loudly.

And yet, throughout the whole dread-filled process, I felt resentful.  Normally I enjoy the stroll down memory lane that’s conjured by sifting through a pile of wrinkled receipts -- heck, some years, I forget about the office supplies I’ve bought altogether until I’m reminded about them by that little slip of paper, which sparks both a smile and the sweet memory of extra-sticky Post-It notes, in pastel colors -- but at this time of year, those receipts bring me little pleasure.  In fact, thanks to the IRS, all joy has been sucked from those receipts, and they become a burden, to be categorized, analyzed and tallied.

If there were some person, some individual human being responsible for my pain, somebody at whom I could’ve directed my anger and resentment, I’m sure I would’ve sent a cleverly-worded, vitriol-filled email to his or her inbox -- I mean, anything to put off actually doing my taxes.  But with no face to envision on the other side of said email, I did the next best thing -- I started daydreaming (well, it was night, so I suppose it was actually night dreaming, but when you say that, people tend to think you’re asleep, and while I had been having W-2-filled nightmares for weeks, I was most definitely awake) about alternatives.

Certainly there is a way to tax the people without so cruelly taxing the people, no?

But with so many tax plans having been proposed and shot down through the years, I knew that for any new plan to succeed, it would have to be radically different.  To gain support, it would not only have to pad the government’s coffers, but improve us as a society.  Is such a thing possible?

Probably not.  But I figured whatever I came up with would have to be better than what we’ve got now.  My ideas fell into two major categories:

Stupid Taxes

There are a lot of stupid people in the world.  Unfortunately, other than accidental injuries and gambling losses, there aren’t a lot of direct penalties for their stupidity.

A Stupid Tax changes that.  If you do something stupid, you pay a tax.  If you do something monumentally stupid, you’re in the top tax bracket.  The Stupid Tax has the potential to meet both our requirements -- make money and improve society.  If people continue to be as stupid as they currently are, they pay the price, and the republic flourishes.  If, as a result of the tax, people curb their stupidity, less taxes are generated, but less stupidity is generated as well, and the republic flourishes, finding balance along the stupidity/income equilibrium (it’s an Economics term.  You can look it up).

The only challenge here is the creation of the Stupid Police, who would be responsible for administering fines, but I suspect that there wouldn’t be a shortage of people applying for the positions, and that there would be more than enough Stupid Tax revenue generated to pay their salaries.  Seems like a win-win to me.

Potential Variants/Add-Ons:  Fashion Tax, Grammar Tax, Media Annoyance Tax

Cool Taxes

As effective as the Stupid Tax is likely to be, the danger is that you’re taxing people who are already receiving some measure of punishment from their own stupidity.  That’s why the perfect balance to the Stupid Tax is the Cool Tax.

Taking the notion of “Cool Points” to the next level, people and things that are deemed cool -- I suspect we’d need the Cool Police here; again I see no shortage of applicants -- pay an extra tax.  Why?  They’re already receiving the benefit of their coolness; clearly they can afford a few extra bucks.

This tax can be applied to producers of cool as well as consumers of cool; if you have a cool new gadget, like an iPod, once the gadget reaches a pre-set degree of popularity (again, we can use principles of Economics here, although I can’t explain any of them), both producers and consumers would pay a premium to either sell or buy the cool product.  Again, this is a win-win; for consumers, there’s an incentive to get in on the thing before everyone else does -- and before the Cool Tax kicks in -- so consumers become more savvy and discriminating.  And for producers, as people scramble to anticipate the next big thing and beat the Cool Tax, sales skyrocket.  And if sales are skyrocketing, what’s a little bit in extra taxes?

Cool Taxes could be assessed for people who are just cool as hell, too.  And try as they might, they couldn’t avoid them, which assures a steady stream of revenue.  I mean, those cool people could try to be less cool, but is there anything cooler than trying not to be cool?

Potential Variants/Add-Ons:  Cute Tax, Smart Tax, Hot Tax

I do worry that the Cool Tax and the Stupid Tax could counterbalance each other and drive society toward a bland sort of mediocrity.  But I’ve got a solution for that, too -- since we’ll be generating so much capital off these taxes, we can repeal all the sin taxes.  If nothing else, that should at least make things interesting.