If every time I heard someone say “You’re wasting MY tax money for THIS?”, I got a penny, I’d manage to pay my next year’s taxes with that pile of pennies! 🙁
All exaggerations aside, I think we need a tax reform!
And I’m not talking about whether we should pay less taxes or more taxes. I’m not talking about tax brackets or tax loopholes or tax-deferred money growth or any of that stuff!
I’m talking about solving the problem of people whining that someone is “wasting THEIR money on THAT?!?”.
So how do we do that? Well, we simply give people ability to block their money being used for what they don’t like!
Here’s the outline of how this would work:
Once a year, government does the budget. One of the outcomes is a document for general population, listing all the areas of spending. This should be readable at the high-level (just the big buckets, sort of what you get here) and down to smaller details for the people who care more. Each item will be clearly identified by some number.
When you submit your tax return, you can fill in a new form that will be introduced. This form will be the “Where is my money going!” form. All taxpayers will have the ability to select up to certain percentage of the total budged for which they DO NOT ALLOW their contribution to be used for. In essence, if you don’t believe in spending money for, say, military, then you simply specify that you don’t want your money to be used for that!
This form is optional.
If you don’t want to bother, and simply trust the government, then simply don’t file this form, and it will be assumed you don’t care and your money will be used however government sees it fit.
This way, if you are the guy who is complaining about his tax money used for something, then next time, simply fill out this form, and then you will be able to be certain that your money is NOT used for that.
Money tracking and computer systems at the IRS are more than capable of tracking this information. I even wonder, if this would on the average really change anything, since I suspect that the distribution of the money will ultimately stay the same. However, it does add additional check on the government. If there will be some initiative that will be really so hugely unpopular with the whole population, then what’s better way to stop that, than to dry up the funds for it?