By Robert Pratt
Weekdays 5p-7p on News/Talk 790, KFYO

I’m not the first to say it: If Americans had to write a check to the government each year, or each quarter, for not only income taxes owed but, also the full amount of social security payments owed, we’d have an entirely different country.

Both the income and Social Security tax collection systems were designed to fool people so that they don’t realize how much tax they pay in a real, week to week, out of pocket manner. Many Americans, maybe a majority, actually think an income tax refund is money they are getting from the government, and look forward to it while ignorant that it’s just their own money they overpaid and let the government keep without paying them interest.

Social security is worse; it uses the same withholding scheme and adds the myth that your employer is paying half. It is funds budgeted for the cost of your employment that is paid which would otherwise be in your paycheck. Self-employed folk pay the full fifteen or so percent and it is called a self-employment tax – how’s that for a country that is supposed to be friendly to entrepreneurism?!

How does it get setup this way? Liberals and pure big government lovers do it purposefully but not on their own. It’s the so-called moderates, technocrats and RINO-types that enable such. Those types almost never see the harm in the long-run of much of anything and, think those of us who do, are silly alarmists.

I’m for a flat-tax everyone pays and must write a check for. The Fair-Tax sales tax is good too but, I’m afraid it will also seem automatic to most and leave them without the concern they’d have for government spending if they wrote a check every year.

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Robert Pratt is the host of the top-rated Pratt on Texas. Visit his website at www.prattontexas.com

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