Freedom Line Blog

You probably don’t need any more sources of gloom on this tax day. But what you do need is an understanding of just how destructive America’s current tax regime is. And for that you couldn’t do much better than the words of conservative economist extraordinaire Arthur Laffer, who writes in today’s Wall Street Journal:

There is a lot more to taxes than simply paying the bill. Taxpayers must spend significantly more than $1 in order to provide $1 of income-tax revenue to the federal government.

To start with, individuals and businesses must pay the government the $1 in revenue plus the costs of their own time spent filing and complying with the tax code; plus the tax collection costs of the IRS; plus the tax compliance outlays that individuals and businesses pay to help them file their taxes.

In a study published last week by the Laffer Center, my colleagues Wayne Winegarden, John Childs and I estimate that these costs alone are a staggering $431 billion annually. This is a cost markup of 30 cents on every dollar paid in taxes.

For those of you keeping score at home, that’s the equivalent of a 30% tax on … well, paying taxes.

A Tax Day message from Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.