Taxes
We
must work hard to hold the line on taxes. Too often, debates about taxation
focus on only one part of a picture that adds up to much more. We now pay:
- Property, income, and gasoline taxes.
- A sales tax that adds more than 7 percent on everything we buy in California except food.
- Excise taxes
that add to the cost of many individual products.
- Local parcel
taxes and special district taxes.
- A vehicle license fee every year.
- Many other fees
for services that the government requires us to use.
- Unemployment
tax that most of us hope to never recover.
- Payroll taxes
for Social Security and Medicare programs that we hope will still be there
when we need them.
Gasoline
taxes provide a good example of how multiple levies and fees have been
imposed on our everyday products and transactions. Currently, we pay
per-gallon gasoline taxes of 18 cents to the federal government and 18.4
cents to the state plus a state oil spill fee of 0.095 cents, a state
underground storage fee of 1.2 cents, and a sales tax of at least 7.25
percent on the total purchase price. So when gas costs $1.50 per gallon, the
government share adds up to at least 48.6 cents, which is nearly one-third of
the total price. Levying the sales tax on the entire purchase price also
leads to charging a tax on the other state and federal per-gallon taxes,
which brings the government an additional 2.7 cents per gallon.
More
taxes that add to the final cost of gasoline are collected on the profits and
purchases of producers, refiners, wholesalers, and retail suppliers who bring
oil from the ground to the pump. In addition, a portion of the wages paid to
all employees along this chain is also paid in taxes. With all of these added
costs, it seems that government, rather than free enterprise, is the real
profiteer in the oil business.
An
unsettling catch 22 of the Democrat approach to taxes is that it requires the
state to collect more money for assistance programs to help people who then
need two jobs to pay their taxes. Overall, many of us will pay nearly half of
our income in taxes of one sort or another every year. I was once scolded by
Lois Wolk, my Democrat opponent in this election, about how Americans are
undertaxed. This is a basic philosophy with which I strongly disagree.
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