Question: Why are people so upset about taxes?
Answer: Taxes are levied on citizens for the purpose of doing overall good for everyone. And in most cases that is true, but when people get taxed to the point that they start feeling used and abused by the taxing system, the Internal Revenue Service, the state, county, and local governments, then the issue of taxation becomes a hot issue.
Question: What is the problem with the tax system today?
Answer: The problem with taxes is that there are so many of them. There is an income tax, property tax, gasoline tax, sales tax, tobacco tax, alcoholic beverage tax, business license tax, highway tax, take out tax, eat in tax, and so on and so on until it seems that everything in this country is taxed.
Question: Are there other forms of taxes other than regular taxes?
Answer: Many taxes are presented in the form of licenses. You have to pay for the license if you are going to do whatever it is you need the license for, such as fishing, hunting, driving, operating a business, building a house, using toll roads, crossing certain bridges, etc.
Question: Don't we vote certain taxes on ourselves during elections and don't they have time frames to be collected and then discontinued?
Answer: Sometimes taxes are supposedly levied for a short period of time, just long enough to pay for a something that is needed, but years if you check, the tax may still be there.
Question: If a certain tax is unpopular with the voters, shouldn't it be repealed?
Answer: Yes, that is why we vote for our elected officials. Some taxes should be repealed but it is hard for any politician to say for certain that a particular tax should be discontinued and not be in favor of another that would benefit his own constituents.
Question: Shouldn't politicians be held accountable for saying that they are against taxes, yet, they don't do anything to solve the problem?
Answer: Some politicians claim to take a solid stance against more new taxes. Yet, they don't do anything concrete to decrease our tax burdens, and in some cases, they vote silently for more tax increases or for a tax that is not called a tax, yet, it is a charge on the taxpayer.