What Oil Filters Can Teach Us About Taxes And Charity
There is a wonderful old series of commercials extolling
Fram Oil Filters. In one, the opening
shot is a garage where the hood is up on some ailing automobile. A man in coveralls looks down and shakes his
head. The owner of the car was obviously
both penurious and misguided: looking to save money in the short term, he
failed to regularly change his oil filter.
An economic abyss now looms.
Speaking of the abyss, last week’s round of toxic chatter from
the campaigns and their surrogates had more than the usual quota of gaffes and
hyperbole. There was the Joe Biden
“chains” comment (and the delicious irony of Rudy Giuliani calling Biden a
clown) and GOP Senatorial hopeful Todd Akin’s bizarre riff on “legitimate rape”,
and Paul Ryan slamming Mr. Obama’s plan to cut Medicare Advantage by $716
Million dollars, even though his own plan does exactly the same thing.
There was also a little bit of fun when a report came out
that roughly 30 GOP House members of and their staffers were reprimanded for
drinking and, in one case, skinny-dipping (Freshman Congressman Kevin Yoder of
Kansas) while on a trip to Israel last August.
The GOP defends the junket as underscoring “the strategic importance of the relationship with one of
our greatest allies,” which, I suppose, is an interesting way of getting Rep.
Yoder to wrap himself in the flag.
But, amidst all the noise and faux outrage, there remains
one particularly persistent little itch that won’t go away no matter how much
we scratch: Mitt’s tax returns. He has released 2010, and promised 2011, and
that’s all we are getting. Of course, this leads to all kinds of (unflattering)
speculation.
So, what is in Mitt’s treasure trove of IRS data? Probably what you think-rich man has all
sorts of ways to avoid paying taxes. Could
there be more embarrassing disclosures, such as a tax amnesty? Perhaps, although I doubt there’s anything
racier than an actuarial “Lifestyles of The Rich And Famous.”
The White House, not to play a political card (not them!)
offered Mitt a way out, or, as my children would say, “trap!” Release five years of returns and all is
forgiven. Nope. Mitt doesn’t have to,
and he isn’t going to, and there is nothing further to discuss.
Except, there still is, and even the GOP pros know it. So Mitt causally let it drop that he paid
about 13.6% in taxes-less than most of us who are reliant on the less favored
earned income, but something. He should
have let it go at that, because he then noted that his tax and charitable
contributions, he “gives” closer to 20%.
An interesting perspective.
Taxes are charity. The Washington
Post interviewed Michael Tanner of the Koch-affiliated Cato Institute, who
confirmed that, indeed, the conservative position on taxes is that they are a
form of charity, in that both are intended for the public good.
Being the moderate statist that I am, I had a hard
time wrapping my head around that. In my
mind, taxes go for things like fire departments, roads, schools, cops, and
national defense.
Charity, on the other hand, might also “go for the public good”
but is by no means the same. I pick my charities
based on my personal priorities: my place of worship, my alma mater, a library, a park. Yesterday, my wife and I
sent a check to honor our late parents. I
could have approached the IRS with a request that they consider a direct
payment, but something tells me that wouldn’t have worked.
Mitt, too, has his priorities: his church, The US Equestrian
Team Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, the Friends of the George W. Bush Library. Those are choices that reflect his personal
interests and political ambitions, as is perfectly appropriate.
But, if conservatives continue to equate charity to taxes,
aren’t they really asking for what amounts to a personal line-item veto on
expenditures? The lower they can drive taxes
and public spending, the more “charity” has to fill the gap. That is, of course, exactly what the Ryan
Plan is all about. It doesn't balance the budget, but it does eliminate
virtually all discretionary domestic spending along with entitlement “reform”,
and upstreams the cash to the affluent.
Presumably, those folk could take the money they got from Granny and then engage in “charity”-they would give
(or not) to the causes they support. So,
Mitt could pay less for things like schools and cops, and give more to various
conservative causes and show horses.
That shows you just how much the modern conservative
movement has gone away from long-held concepts of public virtue. Government should provide nothing beyond
national defense--and even a war can be put on a credit card. Roads,
sanitation, public safety, schools are all optional.
They have pushed this idea brilliantly, with a series of
anti-tax measures that disconnect the individual from the public services he
takes advantage of. There is a
fascinating article by Floyd Norris in the New York Times “Schools Pass Debt To
The Next Generation” which covers a recent bond issue by the Poway (California)
school district. Poway needs to do
renovations, but the taxpayers, aided by various Propositions, don’t want to pay for them, they just want to use them. So Poway is borrowing $105 Million at 6.8%, and
deferring payment until 2033, when, with accrued
interest, it will pay more than eight times what it borrowed. My friend Cynical Cynic says that the
difference between Democrats and Republicans is that the Democrats want to tax
and spend, and the Republicans borrow and spend. We end up in the same place. He seems to have it just right.
Brings me back to the Fram commercial. The owner of the shop looks at the damage
that could have been avoided if only the owner had changed his filter, and
delivers the punch line, “you can pay me now, or, pay me later.” Then he slams down the hood.
I do change my oil and filter regularly, but the car is
getting old. I’m thinking of setting up
a charitable foundation. I wonder if the
IRS would go for it?
MM
