Tax Burden
I got a buddy who, like too many of the entrepreneurial South End, works ‘under the table’. Meaning, for you law abiding legitimate taxpayers, he gets paid in cash so he doesn’t have to report his wages to the IRS or pay state income tax on those earnings. Totally illegal, you understand. Even most undocumented immigrants pay income tax and social security withdrawals, even if they’ll probably never see one dime of social security.
My pal thinks he’s outsmarting ‘The Man’. Uncle Sam. Big Government. I’m old fashioned, I guess, or a little out of synch. I pay taxes – admittedly, not a whole lot of taxes since I don’t make a whole lot of money as a starving artist – and I don’t mind paying em. Pays for roads and police and fire fighters and EMT’s and schoolteachers and courthouses and city halls and libraries and, well, all those sorta important things The Man is there to do. It’s a long list and I bet some of it I wish He wasn’t doing, like maybe some of our recent wars. But I got a vote and I’ll accept the outcome, being happy to live in a so-called democracy.
I got another buddy who set up an offshore account to AVOID paying The Man. Mitt Romney does the same thing and it’s totally LEGAL. Boeing just got a 9 billion dollar tax break from this state after they threatened to move somewhere that paid more for their extortion, then they busted the union, offered them their ‘last chance’ to capitulate or else. The union voted 51% to keep their jobs at whatever Boeing was offering. Democracy in action. We got major corporations that pay zero taxes. Zip. Nada. Zilch. All perfectly legal.
So okay, I pay my taxes. My buddies think I’m a damn fool. The Man tells me I’m a Good Citizen. Me, I think Boeing should pay taxes and I think those corporations should too. I think I can tell the difference between our fair share and a tax loophole for the rich even if I don’t have a lobbyist on the payroll. Maybe that’s because I confuse Morality with Legality. Something that’s easy to do on the South End.