Why We Ask: Our mission and operations are funded 100% by conservatives like you. Please help us continue to extend Liberty to the next generation and support the 2024 Year-End Campaign today.

April 15, 2015

Go File Those Taxes — It’s Income Redistribution Day

Confiscating money from half the nation’s citizens and giving it to the other half.

Today is that most mirthless of days, April 15, tax filing day, or as we in our humble shop have long dubbed it, “Income Redistribution Day.” It’s the day each year when government confiscates money from about half the nation’s citizens and gives a lot of it to the other half. (That’s an over-generalization, but you get the idea.) At least they didn’t choose April 19 – Patriots’ Day – for tax filing. In honor of today, here are a few things to remember about taxes and the IRS.

It will take Americans 114 days this year to fully pay for the burden of all the levels of government — three more days than last year. In other words, when you pay your taxes today you’ll still have to work another nine days just to actually pay them off.

Then again, not everyone pays income taxes. The top 20% of earners bring in 51.3% of all income and yet pay 83.9% of all federal income taxes. By contrast, the bottom 20% of earners actually receive money from Washington those in higher brackets. What was that about a “fair share” again?

Americans of all tax brackets spend 6.1 billion hours filing individual and business taxes — hours that could otherwise be spent producing wealth rather than redistributing it. The Mercatus Center estimates the cost of filing to be anywhere from $215 billion per year to nearly $1 trillion. Perhaps that’s because there are nearly 75,000 pages in the tax code.

Where did your tax money go? Just shy of half of all federal tax revenue goes to major entitlements — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other health care programs. (Before we move on, to be crystal clear, some government benefits are “earned,” like Social Security or military benefits. These stand in contrast to “unearned” benefits of welfare, food stamps and the like.) Another 20% goes to various wealth transfer programs like unemployment benefits and food stamps. That’s more than two-thirds of the federal budget that goes from your pocket to someone else’s. See why we call it “Income Redistribution Day”?

Finally, we’d be remiss if we didn’t note that ObamaCare subsidies factored into millions of returns for the first time this year. And that’s going to mean a lot of, er, adjustments. According to Investor’s Business Daily’s Betsy McCaughey, “If you enrolled in ObamaCare in 2014 and got a subsidy to pay for it, you’re at risk of losing your refund. Surprise: You may even owe Uncle Sam money. Only 4% of people who signed up for ObamaCare got the correct subsidy, so a whopping 96% will see their tax bill adjusted, some up and others down. Who would design a system that’s right only 4% of the time?” Democrats, that’s who.

Oh, and some 800,000 Healthcare.gov customers got the wrong tax form, and some may have to wait months to sort out their tax returns.

All the while, the IRS is essentially rewriting ObamaCare provisions regarding tax credit eligibility. The Supreme Court will settle part of that problem in June (subsidies on federal vs. state exchanges), but the IRS is rewriting other provisions, too. Remember: You can trust the IRS!

Today is a day to take stock of how a government that provides everything for its citizens can become a massive burden. It’s not just financial, either; it’s an issue of trust, power and the future of our great nation.

We close with the immortal words of Will Rogers: “The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don’t know when it’s through if you are a crook or a martyr.”

Post script: Today, April 15th, Barack Obama has decreed that all flags are to be flown at half mast “as a Day of Remembrance for President Abraham Lincoln,” who was assassinated 150 years ago yesterday. We can think of other reasons to fly them at half mast, like the fact today is “Forced Income Redistribution Day,” or that Barack Obama is president.

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.