The Tax Questions Blog

Question: Check off where your taxes should go, is this a good idea?

We will always have to pay taxes. But imagine if citizen were allowed to allocate where the funding would go. Say you paid 12000 in taxes this year to the feds. Say 50 percent went toward federally needed things like highways and defense. Then the last 50% you could allocate. Maybe a checklist of all the expenditures with a percentage amount. If you didn’t want your money going toward medical research then you could allocate it all to, say the environment. You could tell the government what to do with the remaining 6000 dollars. Would this make you feel better about paying your taxes?

What would you allocate your dollars to, and what percentage?

Answer: Nice idea, but who's to say what is federally-needed or even how much spending is needed for those federally-needed items. While I think that spending on defense is necessary, you and I might differ between how much. Also, the idea behind a deliberative body is to weigh all the needs of the country and equally apportion spending so these needs get met. Under your system, minorities (in the democratic not racial sense) would never get funding for their needs - take specifically orphan drugs - would you propose funding for a drug that might save say 20 people a year? Our drug companies certainly won't since there is no profit, so that is why the government undertakes this funding - it would probably never be undertaken if people voted on it since only maybe a few hundred people with the disease and another few thousand who live and work with them might vote for the funding.

Unluckily, individual's self-interests enter into this proposal too much and better is a societal view of what we should spend tax monies on.

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