Dan McLaughlin

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To Home Page Latest Newsletter Column Archives Click to get these columns for your local paper	Post Comments Below © 2007 Daniel J. McLaughlin The "Shuffle Taxes ARound" Rebate Attention New York State homeowners! The STAR rebate season here. Log on to www.nystax.gov to claim your hush money. STAR is an acronym for School Tax Relief, or more appropriately, Shuffle Taxes ARound. Wow! Aren’t we taxpayers lucky? We are going to get a rebate. We are supposed to be very impressed that our legislators are hard at work trying to send us cash. Their beneficence, however, uses our own money confiscated through other taxes. We wouldn’t need a rebate if they just lowered the tax burden. That would, indeed, be impressive. Property owners in my school district who paid a minimal amount of school taxes will get a rebate check of $287.16, whereas someone who paid thousands in tax will get a sum total of .…$0.00. The amount you get back decreases as the amount of tax you pay increases. That must fit with someone’s distorted vision of fairness, but for the life of me, I cannot see it. Those who paid thousands in taxes need relief from those taxes far more than those who paid little or none. The purported purpose of the rebate is to relieve some of the weight borne by taxpayers. That is a very good goal. It is very apparent, though, that the real purpose of the rebate is buying votes through redistribution of income. The incumbents are patting themselves on the back for giving relief from the “crushing burden of high property taxes”. They are definitely correct about that crushing burden. That, along with all of the other taxes and fees that New York state and local governments extract from their citizens, puts us near the top of the list for tax burden among all the states in America. When you add the incredible regulatory burden, it is quite obvious why New York is one of the last places that producers seek to expand, and why productive workers choose to move to other states. Relief to the taxpayers can only result from reduction in spending and regulation. All spending by any governmental body, federal, state or local, can only come from the pockets of the citizens. There is no true long term tax relief without spending relief, in spite of clever arguments based on convoluted theories. Spending can only come from direct taxation, the inflation tax, which reduces the value of everyone’s money, or taxation of future generations through debt, all of which ultimately come from the pockets of citizens. The star rebate program is another clever way to take money from one person’s pocket and distribute it to others, based on the wisdom of all knowing bureaucrats in Albany. We are supposed to believe that it is truly tax relief rather than redistribution. There is a famous phrase that could apply to the mentality of our legislators regarding taxpayers: “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Taxation discourages whatever activity it is placed on. If you tax labor, you get less incentive to work. If you tax saving, you get less incentive for wealth creation. If you tax investment, you get less investment. If you tax purchases, you get less purchasing. In the real world, the more taxes any individual pays, the less money there is left over for buying real goods and services, food, clothing, shelter, medical care, productive businesses and everything else. The more money that is transferred from productive citizens to unproductive citizens, the less production will occur, and the worse off the people, as a whole, will be. Wealth for each person in society comes only from production by someone in that society. Taxes make us poorer over time. They are the destruction of wealth and the incentive to produce. There are some things provided by government, it can be argued, that grease the wheels of commerce and make us better off, such as the road system. Others, such at police services, are plausibly justified because they are services which many feel can only be provided by government. If those were the only types of things that taxes were collected for, there would be much less burden and much less to be concerned about. Most of the taxes, however, go to activities that make our lives more difficult, less free, less safe and less prosperous. Government spending is the problem. Sending small rebate checks to taxpayers at election time would not be the answer even if the rebates were proportional to taxes paid. Sooner or later, taxpayers will wake up and realize they are being taken for the sucker.
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Daniel Mclaughlin Copyright © 2007 [Daniel McLaughlin]. All rights reserved. Revised: 01/06/08

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The "Shuffle Taxes ARound" Rebate

Attention New York State homeowners! The STAR rebate season here. Log on to www.nystax.gov to claim your hush money. STAR is an acronym for School Tax Relief, or more appropriately, Shuffle Taxes ARound.

Wow! Aren’t we taxpayers lucky? We are going to get a rebate. We are supposed to be very impressed that our legislators are hard at work trying to send us cash. Their beneficence, however, uses our own money confiscated through other taxes. We wouldn’t need a rebate if they just lowered the tax burden. That would, indeed, be impressive.

Property owners in my school district who paid a minimal amount of school taxes will get a rebate check of $287.16, whereas someone who paid thousands in tax will get a sum total of .…$0.00. The amount you get back decreases as the amount of tax you pay increases. That must fit with someone’s distorted vision of fairness, but for the life of me, I cannot see it. Those who paid thousands in taxes need relief from those taxes far more than those who paid little or none.

The purported purpose of the rebate is to relieve some of the weight borne by taxpayers. That is a very good goal. It is very apparent, though, that the real purpose of the rebate is buying votes through redistribution of income. The incumbents are patting themselves on the back for giving relief from the “crushing burden of high property taxes”.

They are definitely correct about that crushing burden. That, along with all of the other taxes and fees that New York state and local governments extract from their citizens, puts us near the top of the list for tax burden among all the states in America. When you add the incredible regulatory burden, it is quite obvious why New York is one of the last places that producers seek to expand, and why productive workers choose to move to other states.

Relief to the taxpayers can only result from reduction in spending and regulation. All spending by any governmental body, federal, state or local, can only come from the pockets of the citizens. There is no true long term tax relief without spending relief, in spite of clever arguments based on convoluted theories. Spending can only come from direct taxation, the inflation tax, which reduces the value of everyone’s money, or taxation of future generations through debt, all of which ultimately come from the pockets of citizens.

The star rebate program is another clever way to take money from one person’s pocket and distribute it to others, based on the wisdom of all knowing bureaucrats in Albany. We are supposed to believe that it is truly tax relief rather than redistribution. There is a famous phrase that could apply to the mentality of our legislators regarding taxpayers: “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

Taxation discourages whatever activity it is placed on. If you tax labor, you get less incentive to work. If you tax saving, you get less incentive for wealth creation. If you tax investment, you get less investment. If you tax purchases, you get less purchasing. In the real world, the more taxes any individual pays, the less money there is left over for buying real goods and services, food, clothing, shelter, medical care, productive businesses and everything else. The more money that is transferred from productive citizens to unproductive citizens, the less production will occur, and the worse off the people, as a whole, will be. Wealth for each person in society comes only from production by someone in that society.

Taxes make us poorer over time. They are the destruction of wealth and the incentive to produce. There are some things provided by government, it can be argued, that grease the wheels of commerce and make us better off, such as the road system. Others, such at police services, are plausibly justified because they are services which many feel can only be provided by government. If those were the only types of things that taxes were collected for, there would be much less burden and much less to be concerned about. Most of the taxes, however, go to activities that make our lives more difficult, less free, less safe and less prosperous.

Government spending is the problem. Sending small rebate checks to taxpayers at election time would not be the answer even if the rebates were proportional to taxes paid. Sooner or later, taxpayers will wake up and realize they are being taken for the sucker.

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