Fortunately for those of us who don’t like filing income taxes and potentially paying the government more money, Tax Day isn’t on April 15 this year. The federal government pushed the date back for the second year due to the coronavirus pandemic. Now, people have until May 17 to get this unpleasant task done.
In future years, tax rates in some brackets could be higher. President Joe Biden wants to raise taxes on those earning more than $400,000 per year — and there are progressives in Congress who support a 70% top marginal tax rate. However, the United States shouldn’t wait until there are enough votes to raise taxes to let rich people start paying what they consider their fair share.
There are people such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and liberals in Hollywood who think the wealthy should pay more in taxes. The answer on both sides of the aisle should be this one: Let them pay their so-called fair share.
If someone makes $1 billion in a year and he or she really want the federal government to tax them at a 70% rate, instead of about 37%, who are we to stop the person from helping the cause? If someone earns money and wants the federal government to have it, we should thank the person for his or her contribution. That’s a decision we ought to let people make by including an option to allow them to pick a higher tax rate to pay on tax returns.
Massachusetts already does a watered-down version of this, and few pay. Until a few years ago, not even Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren paid it. In 2000, there was a successful ballot question that gradually lowered the state’s income tax from 5.9% to 5%. It passed 59.4% to 40.6%, but since more than 1 million people voted against the reduction, Chip Ford of Citizens for Limited Taxation came up with the idea to allow people to pay a 5.85% tax rate if they wished. Only about 1,200 to 1,700 Bay Staters per year do it, but at least some wealthy liberals can show how much they truly care about funding roads, fire departments, schools, and MassHealth without buying state lottery tickets.
Ideally, someone could pick any rate higher than his or her effective tax rate and pay based on that. Even an option to pay the pre-Tax Cuts and Jobs Act rate could work. If people hate former President Donald Trump to the point where they won’t accept his tax cut, why not pay the Obama-era rate?
Another perk of it would be that since presidential candidates often release their tax returns, we would get to see how much these wealthy people paid in taxes in the years before running when they had the choice of paying more. In 2020, for example, we could have seen how much Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg thought they should pay in taxes. Steyer could have looked pretty woke if he had given 90% of his income to the federal government. (Maybe Sen. Bernie Sanders would have enthusiastically said “hi” to him if he did.)
This likely would not raise much money because even wealthy liberals wouldn’t contribute for the most part. But who knows? Maybe they would prove us all wrong and donate more to the federal coffers.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a freelance writer who has been published in USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other outlets.
