Austrians tend to be allergic to making specific policy recommendations. It seems to me that the primary reason for this is that Austrians view all forms of government action as coercive and, therefore, morally unjustifiable. A consistent moral criticism of government coercion must reject all government coercion.
While I agree with this and have concluded that human liberty and welfare cannot be advanced through any political means, that does not mean that Austrians should have no specific recommendations for improvements to the government’s policies. While all coercion is immoral, not all coercion is equally grotesque. If a liberal is consulted, surely he should be able to recommend that thrashing someone accused of theft with a rod is morally superior to cutting off their hand, even though both acts are immoral.
So, I have realized that one of the things that the so-called “payroll taxes” - Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. - do to promote government revenue is to reduce the credit for taxes paid on your income tax form by half, at least, for normal income earners. If you earn a middle class income ($60K +/- $20K) - where the largest chunk of American income is earned - you will pay about 50% of your taxes in “income tax” and the other 50% in “payroll tax”. Yet, when you fill out your income taxes, the IRS will only acknowledge the money you paid as “income tax” as taxes paid. So, this deflates the tax schedule by making it appear you are paying, say “only” 20% of your income in income taxes when you are actually paying much more than that because your income is defined for the purposes of income taxes as take-home-pay + payroll taxes but you only get to take home your take home pay.
Let me give an example:
Bob earns $100. He pays $15 in payroll taxes and $20 in income taxes. He takes home $65. Congress says that Bob is “only” paying 20% income tax. In fact, Bob is paying much more income tax, he is paying (20/65) = 30.7% income tax. The payroll taxes don’t even factor into Bob’s income since he never sees that money (and sensible people understand that the “payroll tax” money is sunk, it will not be recovered in the future by those who pay it today, at least, not in real value.) And regardless of what you call it, Bob is paying 35% of his income in taxes. And Bob is just your average middle class earner with a couple kids.
So, to get the payroll taxes “on the radar”, we should put a line on the income tax form for payroll taxes paid and receive credit for that. Adjust the income tax schedule however you like to make it “revenue neutral”, but it would be a lot more honest gauge of just how much property the government is seizing. The liars in Congress want to play these semantics games but we should call them on the carpet and it is a concrete policy recommendation that Austrians should be able to make without feeling they have sold out. It’s like recommending caning an innocent man over whipping him with scorpions.
Clayton -