Tax Someone Else

Tim Worstall reports:

Did you know that if you feel you are not paying enough tax you can simply send a check to Uncle Sam? To say thank you for all of the blessings that have been showered upon your grateful and smiling countenance? Indeed you can and the address is here:

Gifts to the United States
U.S. Department of the Treasury
Credit Accounting Branch
3700 East-West Highway, Room 6D37
Hyattsville, MD 20782

That might be worth printing out then clipping and keeping. And when a campaigner tells you in his stump speech that he thinks taxes should be raised, smile sweetly and ask him how much he added to his tax bill last year. After all, if he thinks you should pay more taxes shouldn't he already be doing so voluntarily himself?

You might also ask someone so keen to get their hands into your wallet whether they've ever heard of the concept of revealed preferences? That is, don't be fooled by what people say they will do, watch what they actually do. The answer to "Would you be willing to pay more taxes?" is rather different when it's a doe-eyed surf-bunny talking about saving starving children than it is when it's me asking if you'd pay more to raise Bill Clinton's Presidential pension (to which the answer is probably "Stay there Sonny while I load my gun"). So how do people really act when they have this opportunity to indeed give more money to the Federal Government?

No word yet from Al Gore,John Kerry, or the estate of John Rawls on why they don't want to voluntarily pay higher taxes.