The Patriot Post® · Fair Enough!

Last Wednesday, April 15, was the deadline for the annual ritual in which each of us forks over to Uncle Sam the allocated share of our earnings from the prior year. And like the blooming of perennial spring flowers, we were also treated to the predictable demands from the Left that the wealthy among us finally step up and pay their “fair share” of income taxes to ease the tax burden on everyone else.

It’s nothing new. In April 2009, in one of my earliest columns, I wrote about new President Barack Obama’s entreaty that we do so to counteract the damage caused by George W. Bush’s detestable “tax cuts for the rich.” (Sound familiar?) In the years since, we’ve heard that pitch incessantly from Bernie Sanders and his supporters. We’re hearing it now from Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City, and even from supposedly moderate Governor Abigail Spanberger of Virginia.

So let’s look at the numbers. It turns out that, under our very progressive tax code, the wealthiest among us pay a substantial share of federal income taxes. Currently, the top 1% of American wage earners pay nearly 40% of all U.S. income taxes; the top 10% pay close to 70% of U.S. income taxes; and at the other end of the spectrum, more than one-third pay no federal income taxes at all.

Moreover, those percentages haven’t changed very much in the nearly two decades since the Obama years. What has changed is that our economy has grown, there are more wage earners among us, and people at all income strata are making more money and thus paying more taxes than ever — with the net result being that tax receipts (corrected for inflation) from those top two tiers (1% and 10%) have nearly doubled. But the bad news is that during the same time frame, the deficit — the shortfall between the government’s revenue and its debt — has risen twice as fast as tax payments have increased.

Moreover, it is a well-established economic principle (and common sense) that tax increases change the spending and investment behavior of those taxed, and at some point decrease rather than increase tax revenue, which presumably was the whole idea behind raising taxes in the first place.

In short, we don’t have a taxing problem; we have a spending problem, and we’re losing ground fast. Squeezing a bit more from the wealthy won’t help at all.

And what about the matter of whether those who can best afford to pay taxes are carrying their “fair share” of the cost of the vast benefits offered by this great country?

It’s hard to argue with the importance of fairness. Fair is the opposite of foul, or worse, unfair, which only evil people want to be. We all like fair: fair play, fair ball, fair weather. But the simple fact that 1% of Americans carry 40% of their fellow citizens’ tax burden strikes me as more than fair and is, in fact, extraordinarily generous. Maybe a hearty “Thank you!” is a more fitting reaction than a Mamdani demand that they dig deeper.

And on the matter of “fairness,” it seems to me that the other end of the income scale has been completely ignored. Is it “fair” that 30-40% of U.S. citizens pay no federal taxes at all? I don’t think so. And taking that question one step further, let’s not forget those 10-20 million illegal immigrants; some of them pay income taxes, but others surely do not, even though they earn income here. How (un)fair is that?

Readers, don’t panic: this is not about selfishly making life even tougher for those struggling to get by with limited income. Not at all. Rather, it is a reminder of that simple life principle we’ve learned again and again: when we human beings get something for nothing, we subconsciously assign its value as zero, and then we instinctively treat it as worthless.

It’s easy for us to acknowledge that U.S. citizenship is among the most prized possessions on planet Earth. So I’m thinking it would be worthwhile to make sure that every wage-earning American citizen has some skin in the game, even in the form of a very modest participation in our income-tax system.

With respect to those millions of illegal aliens residing here, we’ve not yet seen the end result of the administration’s mass deportation plan, but regardless of how far we take that and how long it takes to get there, I believe strongly that we must find a way to identify all who are here and to ensure that they also pay their “fair share.”

And for all, let’s keep our eyes on the big picture:

Our progressive tax code works, at least in the sense that it assigns income tax burden in proportion to our citizens’ ability to pay — so it’s high time that we stopped beating the “fair share” drum. But more importantly, we must own up to our fundamental problem of spending money we don’t have. We’re losing ground fast, and increasing taxes won’t help; it can only make things worse.

The lesson for our government is the same as the one your family and mine have learned again and again. We must live within our means.