Some thoughts on tax day

Today is April 15, "tax day" in most years, although this year we have a two-day reprieve, giving us all 48 more glorious hours to fret over incomprehensible forms and battle long lines at the post office. Yippee.

My wife and I cut substantial checks to both the Arizona and federal governments this year, reflecting the penalties built into the system for daring to make business investments. Of course, we're supposed to feel grateful, because our accountant was able to take advantage of IRS rules that reduced the hit below what it would have been if our tax preparer didn't have a wizardly mastery of tax arcanery. So the experience has been a bit more like getting our pockets picked than like full-blown highway robbery. Again, yippee.

I find myself underwhelmed by the small favors the tax system throws my way because, in the end, I still get soaked to pay for something I despise. The fact is, I have no interest in supporting government in any way. I consider the institution of government to be nothing more than organized crime, and I'm all too aware of the damage done with the dollars I so reluctantly remit to the tax man.

There is, for instance, the ongoing "war on drugs," in the waging of which government agents use my money to threaten, kidnap and kill people who choose to use officially disfavored intoxicants. Even when narcs aren't doing damage of their own accord, they leave people open to the depredations of the sort of underworld figures who flock to illegal markets.

Then there is the enforcement of the spiderweb of regulations touted as necessary to twenty-first century life. I had a close-up and personal recent experience with some of that red tape when my wife and I joined in a partnership to construct a commercial building. The various permits and fees added thousands of dollars to our costs, and we ended up in a race against the clock to get an "occupancy permit" that would allow us to move a business into our own building. All of this in a supposedly "business-friendly" community.

And let's not forget the continuing fiasco in Iraq, wherein our fearless leaders expend dollars -- and lives, and bullets -- by the wholesale lot, allegedly to impose democracy on a country from the top down. It's an increasingly pointless fiasco that illustrates the inability of government officials to learn from their own mistakes.

Given the theft of our money to be used to do harm, why do we continue to submit to the tax man?

Some people pay their tax bills because of a misguided sense of civic responsibility. Our government schools (tax-funded, of course) are very effective at inculcating the idea that we are nothing but lost children without mother and father state, and that we should be happy for the opportunity to surrender a lion's share of our hard-earned funds for whatever purposes our political leaders choose.

Others pay taxes out of inertia. Especially with withholding taxes, it's easier to continue paying than to stop.

And many of us, myself included, grudgingly pay the bill because the government, quite bluntly, has more guns than us. We feel no obligation to the institution, but we fear it for a host of good reasons. For certain, it kills rather efficiently and indiscriminately. We'll pay as long as the government is strong, and we'll stop as soon as it loses its edge.

And just as all good things must come to an end, so do bad things. That day can't come soon enough.