Our current taxation system is an artifact of a time when
people had jobs, which meant they had employers who could deduct income tax
from their paychecks.
This system doesn’t work anymore. Many people no longer have
employers. They have gigs. They have 1099s, not w-2s and w-4s. “Self-employment”
is the new unemployment.
With no payroll person to deduct taxes from their pay, there
are a lot of people who are essentially on the honor system. Many people are
dishonorable.
I’m calling upon our legislature to collect more taxes by
changing the way taxes are collected, not by raising taxes on the few honorable
people who pay and from the shrinking numbers of people who have a job where a
payroll person deducts taxes from their paychecks.
There are two ways the West Virginia legislature can collect
more taxes. The first way is to increase taxes on the few who pay them. The second
way is to collect taxes at point-of-purchase where everybody will have to pay
the tax when they buy food, services, cars, clothing, gasoline or anything
else.
Did you ever wonder how a drug dealer pays taxes? He
probably doesn’t. It’s a cash business and even if he wanted to pay taxes he
really can’t report income without incriminating himself.
Does it make you mad that drug dealers, prostitutes and
others in cash businesses benefit from the things government provides but they
don’t help pay for it like you do?
The legislature can right that injustice by dropping the
income tax that only a few pay and imposing a sales or consumption tax that
everybody pays.
West Virginia legislature, don’t increase taxes on the few
who pay them, impose a tax that tax evaders can’t evade. Don’t increase the
amount of tax each person pays, increase the number of people who pay tax.
