Tax time

I'm posting in honor of a nationally celebrated (well, observed) but little loved holiday, namely, Tax Day. This year it's April 17th because the 15th is this weekend.

I was just looking at some tax statistics (yes, for fun) and I noticed some numbers that were pretty chilling. I mean, taxes aren't usually chilling to me because I get a refund, but this is definitely noteworthy. (All information following is from the IRS or the US Census)

In the year 2000 (for tax year 1999), overall Federal income was $1.827 trillion. The major categories of income for that tax year were:

1. Personal income taxes: 48%
2. Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment and other retirement taxes: 34%
3. Corporate income taxes: 10%
4. Excise, customs, estate, gift, and miscellaneous taxes: 8%

By the way, that's Clinton's era and there was a surplus of $124 billion.

In the year 2005 (for tax year 2004, naturally this is 2006 so we don't have tax stats for 2005), overall Federal income was $1.9 trillion. Hey, guess what, that's just barely more than 1999! $73 billion more in fact, a tiny amount when compared to other changes, like that between the 1994 tax year and 1999, which saw an increase of $569 billion dollars in taxes. Let's look at breakdowns like we did those of 1999.

1. Personal income taxes: 35%
2. Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment and other retirement taxes: 32%
3. Borrowing to cover deficit: 18%
4. Corporate income taxes: 8%
5. Excise, customs, estate, gift, and miscellaneous taxes: 7%

Ok, do we feel good about Bush's tax cuts now? And oh yeah, that economic "growth" he's been talking about. Now I understand these tax charts are only roughly related to the overall economic situation, but in short, if we're better off, the government gets more in taxes. So why is the government barely pulling in more now than in 1999? But wait, it gets better. The truth is that they're not. Although different indexes have different measures, using the consumer price index, the value of the 2004 dollar compared to the 1999 dollar is 88 cents. That means federal income for 2004 is actually $1.672 trillion in 1999 dollars, when there was a total income of $1.827 trillion.

If you're one of those who supports Bush but hates funding "liberal" programs like social services, let's not forget that National Defense, Veterans, and Foreign Affairs are funded by taxes and account for 23% of the outlays. People, we need taxes and we need more of 'em. That's all there is to it. Although military expenditures are still 23% of the federal budget, when the pie gets smaller, all the pie pieces get smaller.