By Kevin Meyer
The Third Way, a "moderate progressive think tank" that surprisingly I can agree with on many items, is promoting a "taxpayer receipt." Intriguing idea.
For many Americans, the amount they pay in taxes is larger than any purchase they make during the year, but studies show they know almost nothing about where that money goes to.
This contributes to ridiculous beliefs, like the view that 20% of government spending goes to foreign aid, for example. An electorate unschooled in basic budget facts is a major obstacle to controlling the nation’s deficit, not to mention addressing a host of economic and social problems.
Can you imagine? Seems blindingly simple. Most of us already receive such receipts or report cards on our employment benefits and such. I've also mentioned before how payroll deduction makes taxes almost invisible, and how although nearly impossible from a compliance standpoint if we had to each write a check for our taxes every couple weeks we'd be much more interested in knowing what it was being used for.
Information, preferably visual, to educate us serfs. Instead of treating us like compliant mushrooms.
I'd love to receive something like the following. Ok, preferably with a much larger tax bite because of a much larger income!