“It ain’t over on April 15! If you stop, for example, for a $10 pizza on Thursday night to celebrate being done with the IRS for another year, the taxman will be right there to grab a slice or two. On top of paying the sales tax, you’ll also be picking up a major chunk of what the government charges the pizza shop owner for local property taxes, unemployment insurance taxes, federal payroll taxes, federal and state and local income taxes, and worker’s compensation taxes. Altogether, according to a study by the Americans for Tax Reform, that comes to $3.80 on a $10 pizza for the omnipresent taxman. If you pick up a Bud six-pack to go with the pizza, there’s another 43 cents of each beer dollar that goes straight to the taxman for excise taxes, income taxes, property taxes, etc. For something stronger, say Jack Daniels, the taxman’s share is $7.20, on average, out of every $10. Go lighter and just drink Pepsi and it’s 35 percent of what you pay that goes for taxes at all levels. Add some Marlboros and its 75 percent of the retail price that’s funneled directly into the state’s coffers. Get home and hit the light switch and another $26 out of every $100 on the electric bill goes for government rather than electricity. If you’re flying the next day, the taxman is up early and waiting at the aiport, pocketing $40 on every $100 airline ticket. And he’s there in the hotel lobby when you land, snatching $43 on every $100 of the hotel bill. Go out to dinner and it’s another $28 of every $100 of the tab that ends up with the government rather than with the restaurant, the farmers, truckers and everyone else who worked together to produce the meal.”

By the time you pay your income tax and then the taxes on your necessities...what percentage of your gross income has gone straight to some black hole of government incompetence and striaght up theft? 60%? 70%? It's well over 50% that's for sure. But it's all for the good of the state Kamrade so be of good cheer.

Red blood toils, Blue blood takes spoils. Red blood boils, Blue blood stains soils.

Yup, far too much of the tax load is paid in a regressive manner, loaded onto the backs of the bottom end of the pay scale. This is why we need to raise the tax rate on those who make the most! The 2% who have large amounts of money to put towards legal fees to avoid those taxes that the rest of us do pay... letting them today end up with lower tax rates than those of us at the bottom 98% pay on our lower income.

So what? Life is good in these United States for most people I know. The ones suffering most now are governments everywhere who are running deficits. So what gives. The corporations and fat cats are rolling in profit and cash. In Wisconsin now they want to further benefit corporations and stiff governmnet workers. Interesting fact I was out of work for two weeks in the last governemnt shut down. Guess how much wages I lost. Zero, nada. I sat at home watching the Gingrich idiots for two weeks, Went back to work and recieved full pay and benefits for the time off. I tell you these Repubs are idiots when it comes to managaging anything.

The percentage of Federal Taxes that pay for the Military is 54% of the tax dollar.

Reston, just whose money is it the rich man pays his taxes with. Our money. You go up on the rich man's taxes and he will raise the price of his products you and I purchase so he can pay his increase in taxes. There is no way out.

I'm not sure how to rate this or comment with stars. 5 stars for the beginning list of criminal acts called taxes or thumbs down for what the statist theocracy has done / is doing. How typical of the "A" from Reston - she would rather hurt the rich more, instead of relieving the criminally inflected pain on the poor. AND, in typical Waffler world fashion: he mostly only knows people that are doing good, it is the inanimate, aloof from We The People that is suffering (great example of socialist sensibility). Waffler, in Wisconsin, were those that are boldly standing up for the right to work without paying a mandatory communist front collective, how is that stiffing those that don't want to be part of the borg collective? AND, Waffler, you're right, those idiot Repubs should have fired you and then you could see how good the rest of the unemployed's lives are.

Reston and Waffler, as usual, are nuts. Reston, those on the "low end " of the pay scale get a thing which is improperly named as "Earned Income Credit" and results in those folks getting checks up to $4000 or more each year. The so called fat cats pay the lion's share of income taxes each year. Those "soak the rich" schemes that you lefties love so much come directly out of the Marxists play book.

It is too bad that math is too hard for democrats and socialists to understand.

The only way to reduce the tax burden on the producing middle class is to reduce government spending. Soaking the rich soaks us all. The divide is not between those who are rich and those who are poor, but rather between those who are new producers and those who are net consumers.

The progressive liberals always crying about the big bad corporations should focus their aim on the biggest baddest corporation of them all: the Federal Reserve, the granddaddy of all the banks, to which all debts are owed. Without the Fed, the corporate monopolies would crash from their own weight. Notice who got 'bailed out' while 25% of the country went bankrupt: the banks. All these taxes go into banks, for the profit of banks. The banks create money of out nothing and lend it at interest, then take the property from those that cannot pay -- and they have risked nothing and loaned nothing. As long as this money system exists, bankruptcy is inevitable -- except for, you guessed it, the banks!

Waffler gets two weeks off paid during a government shut down....no surprises there. And advocates that the Wisconsin Teachers Union should be supported in their effort to help dumb down American kids and get paid "more" for it. Again...no surprises there.

J I assumed I guess wrongly that most folks think that a government shut down hurts government or its employees. I thought that you would be surprized to know that at least in my case, in the spring of 1995, when National Parks, Social Security Offices, etc. were shut down for two weeks, I sat home, did no government work, and got full pay. It is rumored that the real reason for that shut down was that Gingrich got pissed at Clinton because the later made the former sit in the back of the plane. Why shut government down if it saves no money and hurts people?