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Politics : Clinton's Scandals: Is this corruption the worst ever? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cody andre who wrote (8901)	11/10/1998 10:19:00 PM
From: Les H	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13994

Taxes Continue on Upward Course By John Cunniff AP Business Analyst Tuesday, November 10, 1998; 12:14 p.m. EST Q: Are taxes really rising, or is that perception just a natural consequence of the public's inevitable irritation with taxes? A: Yes, they are really rising. In fact, a decline in total taxes as a percent of income is a rare event indeed. Dollar by dollar, percentage by percentage, tax payments continue on a long-term upward course. Using official figures, the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit research and educational organization, finds that in 1997 Americans paid 35.2 percent of their total income in taxes. The percentage in 1913 was 8.2. As a result, what the foundation calls ''Tax Freedom Day,'' the date on which the average American has earned enough to pay all taxes for the year, occurs in the second week of May. The 1913 date occurred in January. The federal government accounts for most of the tax bite -- 23.4 percent in 1997. However, state and local taxes also have been rising as a percent of income -- reaching 11.8 percent last year. Of course, tax cuts are announced with great fanfare. But tax increases arrive, to paraphrase poet Carl Sandburg, on little cats' feet. That is, almost soundlessly. There is no national announcement, for instance, when rising incomes place people in higher income tax brackets. Local and state sales taxes create a hullabaloo when enacted, but thereafter the tax is automatic. Gasoline taxes almost disappear into the price at the pump. Other taxes are all but unseen by the consumer but add to the tax bill through higher retail prices. They include taxes on alcohol and tobacco as well as on public utilities. Customs duties also raise the take. It's often the same with increases in local real estate taxes, which generally rise in small, sometimes imperceptible, annual increments, but which can add up to substantial amounts as housing prices rise. The big tax-cost factors for many workers are Social Security and Medicare, which in most cases are automatically deducted from paychecks. From 1937 through 1949, employees and employers each paid a 1 percent payroll tax, for a total tax of 2 percent. Today, the total tax is 15.3 percent, made up equally between employer and employee. In addition, the maximum taxable base has risen in every year since 1971. At that time, the maximum taxable base -- the amount on which earner and payer were taxed -- was $7,800. The base now exceeds $68,000. You might ask, who's to blame? Well, all of us. While an argument can be made that governments fail to use tax dollars to their fullest potential -- and that, in fact, they're often wasteful -- voters have a good deal to do with the increase. The public places increasing demands on governments, especially the federal government, to provide an array of social and regulatory services, including Social Security. © Copyright 1998 The Associated Press