Yes, I Love Paying Taxes

I secretly love the ritual.

Every spring I pay a visit to Howard Carlin, my tax accountant, to settle my dues. Howard's upbeat personality, peppered with quirky quips, lightens the proceedings. Click, click, click, go his rapid-motion fingers. The numbers whir on screen like a digital slot machine. Up pops a figure. "See?" Howard chimes. "That's your tax burden." I wrinkle my nose. This faux disgust is just a ceremonial knee-jerk gesture, as if showing my solidarity with the millions of other Americans who vilify taxes.

But deep in my bones, that place that speaks my mind, I am proud and glad to pay my income taxes.

Others, especially those in the "Tea Party" movement, are not. Their battle cry, Taxed Enough Already (TEA), amplifies a crescendo of discontent over taxes (though they rarely specify which kinds) and government spending.

The Tea Party movement comprises protesters politically awakened by the recession. Many Tea Partiers voice their protest by describing lives freshly toppled by a layoff, a foreclosure, a bankruptcy, a catastrophic illness, a depleted retirement account. The irony? Their political complaint — "socialist tyranny," "high taxes," "stimulus spending" — often defies any credible explanation of their individual financial woe.

Though I sometimes look at my country with a healthy dose of criticism — the gimlet eye of a probing skeptic — I couldn't be more pleased to be American. I am as American as Wiffle ball or huckleberry pie. I lovingly recall starting a dog-walking business at the ripe age of 9. From Nike's ad campaign (Just Do It!) to PT Barnum's grand promotion (The Greatest Show on Earth!) all the way back to Benjamin Franklin's cheery Protestant proverbs (Well done is better than well said!), America's optimism and profit motive swim in my red blood cells.

That's why, in contrast to Tea Party "patriots," I fervently support income taxes.

Franklin on taxation

Beyond declaring that the only certainty in life is "death and taxes," Benjamin Franklin also reminded his complaining anti-tax contemporaries that government taxes were a pittance next to life's "more grievous" obligations. "We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly," said the Founding Father.

In deed and thought, I feel as connected to many of our Founding Fathers, and to this nation's revolutionary birth, as does any triangular-hat-sporting, placard-toting, Tea Party protester. Those demonstrators do not own a monopoly on those Founders or our history.

Paying income taxes confirms my pride as a modern-day American citizen. As loudly as I might declare my love for this country, I need to put my money where my mouth flaps. For those like me — not fighting in Afghanistan, not toiling in our foreign service, not extinguishing fires or fighting crime as a public servant — paying taxes makes real my commitment to a functioning America.

Besides the crucial social goods that taxes yield (schools, roads, soldiers, embassies, air traffic control), there are key business-related dividends that benefit people, including Tea Partiers, in the long view. Tax-supported research propagates new ideas to help make companies profitable and hiring. The microchip, the Internet, cellphones: Pick your daily necessity, and the government played a fundamental and pro-active part supporting the research and development necessary to get that product launched and its industry humming. The Tea Partiers dubiously downplay and deny government's crucial role incubating the innovations that shape our economy and change our lives.