Our new payroll service rep is a professional. He knows and understands all the intricacies of payroll responsibilities, including income tax laws, rules, and regulations.
So, as he was reviewing my salary package—income, benefit compensation, tax deductions, mileage and expense reimbursement forms, etcetera, I was struck by the tone and accent of his line of questioning and the apparent attitude he seemed to take-on as he addressed each item with me.
Of course how one hears and receives another person’s tone and/or attitude in a conversation is subjective and interpretive. Nevertheless, finding myself becoming more intense in tone, almost defensive, I decided to address why I was becoming somewhat irritable about the conversation.
In effect, this is what I said to him:
You know what irks me and why I have some intensity in my voice as I respond to some of your line of questioning? It’s this: If I were a very wealthy client, you would have a whole different set of questions for me. Instead of making sure that I am properly paying every last tax I owe (which I am), you would be informing me about ways I might be able to avoid paying taxes on my wealth. You would be telling me about special tax loopholes, various and assorted ways I might escape paying taxes altogether. But, instead, since I am a little guy with an average size paycheck, you are here to tell me in no uncertain terms how I must show every bit of income I receive and must defend every possible deduction I might dare take, so as to ensure that ‘I do the right thing’ in paying Uncle Sam what I owe.And, do you know what his response was? He said that I was right!
He went on to tell me how the very rich don’t pay “income” taxes in the same we do, because they don’t receive a common paycheck. They earn their money through investments and that money is taxed differently. It’s called “Qualified Dividends.” In short, whereas the average American paycheck may be reduced by about 25% because of taxes, the wealthy person’s dividend investment earnings are taxed about 15% (qualified dividends). That is a whopping 10% difference! The average American worker’s income may be taxed about 10% higher than what wealthy Americans pay on their investment income tax--and THAT is what the Republicans are defending when they loudly protest saying, “Don’t raise taxes!”
Back to my discussion with our newly hired payroll tax advisor: until the moment when I directly addressed the dynamic of our conversation, I felt as if his tone was one of an adult to a child, in effect, the adult wagging his finger at the child, saying something like, “Now, Johnny, we must make sure that you are doing the right thing and paying all the necessary taxes that are expected of you. We must be careful not to make any mistakes for it wouldn’t be right to cheat Uncle Sam of what is rightfully due him.”
Knowing that this very same tax expert would have been obsequiously bending over backwards for me, to show me multiple ways I could avoid paying more taxes than I had to, and informing me of every existing tax loophole I could possibly take advantage of, had I been a millionaire, his atttiude was grating on me.
This is what irks me about our present tax system. It is unfair and imbalanced, favoring the wealthy. The wealthy have little need for favorable treatment in tax breaks; yet, they are the first ones to receive the best tax-breaks and tax-loopholes, as compared to people like you and me, the average middle-class American.
Does this truth irk you as much as it does me? Let’s see, this is 2014. It’s an election year, isn’t it?
No comments:
Post a Comment