“The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.” Albert Einstein
It’s April 15! What does that mean? It means that this is the final day Americans have to file their taxes for 2012. Here are 10 interesting facts to know about tax day while you file those last-minute income returns. Source: http://newsone.com/2384605/tax-day-2013/?omcamp=EMC-CVNL
55% of Americans felt their taxes were fair this year: http://www.parade.com/5180/viannguyen/were-your-taxes-fair-this-year/
What have taxes ever done for me? Public education probably helped you learn to read. And when you anything on the Internet, you’re using technology invented with tax dollars. Taxes bring other benefits too, too numerous to mention, including the greatest one of all:
You’re alive. You haven’t died of smallpox or any of the other diseases which are restrained by tax-funded public health programs. You haven’t been crushed inside a collapsing building, mangled by a grain solo, or met any of the other grisly deaths prevented by tax-funded safety programs.
You didn’t burn to death in a home that was never inspected for fire hazards, trapped helplessly as the flames rose and knowing there were no firefighters available to answer your call. You and your significant other weren’t shot down like Batman’s parents on the streets of an under-policed and lawless metropolis.
Taxes provide us with many important services, often far more cheaply and efficiently than the private sector. It wouldn’t be painful to pay taxes in a well-managed economy where everyone prospered. The thriving America of the 1950s and 1960s had top tax rates as high as 91 percent, and those taxes helped create the prosperity that’s so sorely lacking today.
The payroll tax “holiday” wasn’t the best way to give middle-class and lower-income Americans a much-deserved break, but at least it helped. Now that it’s gone they’re struggling even more, and a new (and better-designed) tax break for working Americans isn’t even “on the table” in budget talks. But the Bush tax cuts are still in place for income of up to $400,000. So are the tax breaks that let some of the ultra-wealthy pay little or no taxes. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/the-upside-of-taxes_b_3082295.html
Where do your taxes go? For the third consecutive year, the Obama administration is offering taxpayers an online tool to “understand how and where” their federal tax dollars are being spent. The gadget, called “Your 2012 Federal Taxpayer Receipt,” allows users to enter how much they paid in Social Security, Medicare, and income taxes in 2012, then calculates a personalized breakdown of what money went where. http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/04/15/where-do-your-tax-dollars-go-the-wh-has-an-app-for-that/
Your 2012 Federal Taxpayer Receipt: http://www.whitehouse.gov/2012-taxreceipt
Congressional Budget Office statement on taxes: Over the past 40 years, federal revenues have ranged from nearly 21 percent of GDP in fiscal year 2000 to just over 15 percent in fiscal years 2009, 2010, and 2011, averaging roughly 18 percent of GDP over that span. Under current law, revenues will rise significantly from their recent low relative to GDP over the next few years as the economy recovers from the recession and the tax reductions originally enacted in 2001, 2003, and 2009 expire. CBO analyzes the budgetary and economic effects of various features of the current tax code and proposals for changes in the tax code. http://www.cbo.gov/topics/taxes
CBO on Economic Policy: Economic Effects of Policies Contributing to Fiscal Tightening in 2013- Significant tax increases and spending cuts (took effect in January 2013), sharply reducing the federal budget deficit and causing, by CBO’s estimates, a decline in economic output and an increase in unemployment. http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43694
Shadybrook 