VIEW: 18-19: Curse of Hidden Taxes

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By Bob McDowell (Born Neil Carson) Number 18-19
CURSE OF 'HIDDEN' TAXES Week of 2018/05/07
In the latter days of the 2018 Session of the Oklahoma Legislature there were
included raising the tax on the sales of gasoline and diesel fuel in Oklahoma. As if the
total taxes on these were not already enough after including the Federal taxes, which
also may be raised. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the population has no idea of
the exact amounts of such taxes, or in some cases, that they are even included in the
price paid. In my opinion, the increases are most short sighted on the part of the
majority of Legislators voting 'Yea'. The idea of if you want less of something, you
tax it more as evidenced by the 'hope' of reducing smoking by raising the taxes on
tobacco products, as has been done is still alive and doing quite well.
It is still in my memory that there was a time when there were NO taxes on fuel!!
Then along in the 1930's, when the movement to pave highways began to gain
momentum, it was decided to place a minimal cent tax at the stations. Then some
companies began to advertise "Gas is cheap, only the tax is high" followed by signs on
the pumps showing the prices of the gas, state tax, and federal tax. It was not too long
before Congress legislated that the pump signs were illegal, as they are today. Since
then it has not been possible for the purchasing driver to have any idea how much of the
per gallon price is not going into the oil company or station operator but to the state and
national governments.
Further, when the Oklahoma gasoline tax was imposed it was promised in
Oklahoma City that the money was to go strictly to highways and bridges. Well, not
surprisingly, since then much has been regularly diverted to 'general fund' spending. The
result has been that Oklahoma has long had a reputation for some of the poorest roads in
the Nation, despite the fact that US 66 has been called the "Mother Road" since it was
the first highway paved totally across any State and for its full length from Chicago to Los
Angeles. Surprising to me is the fact that a section just southwest of Stroud was seen by
me as a child being concrete paved and in the fiirst decade of this century driven on by
me and the road was smoother than many newly completed roads today.
Now we have a candidate for Governor who is, and has previously, campaigned on
'removing the tolls from the PikePass'. My question of him, not being allowed to ask, is:
"if the non-toll roads are in such sad conditions today how will the highway department be
able to maintain several thousand lane-miles of added roads from those now maintained
with tolls".
On another tack, it was during the early days following Pearl Harbor that legislation
was passed to make Federal income taxes be collected by deductions from the pay checks
of workers "to help pay for the war effort". Thus the amounts are not evident to the payers,
and some even have excess amounts deducted in order to "have a refund next year". This
was supposed to end at the end of 'WWII', but nothing has been done, or even attempted
to my knowledge.
Previous to that workers were required to pay, in full, the income tax for the
previous year on March 15 following. The rates were basically only one and everyone
knew the amount of tax being paid. Some, including my Dad, sometimes had to resort
to a short term loan to pay the income tax due. It seems obvious to me that if the
'withholding' were ended there would be a much larger and more vociferous clamor to
reduce the taxes and, by necessity, wasteful spending of government.
That reminds me of the one 'possible' down side of the FairTax proposal, which
would be much better than income taxes. The tax is included in the sale price at 'first
purchase', so state sales taxes could be also on that tax part, unless stipulated that such
must be limited to the actual cost of the thing being sold, before the FairTax is applied.
It will take a massive pressure on Congress though to get that through along with repeal
of Amendment XVI to end the income tax.
END
Composed April 27, 2018
Robert W. McDowell, Jr. © 2018 841 Lynwood Lane
918-451-1051 Broken Arrow OK
74011-8608
Email: abdmcfpi@localnet.com