Don't Increase The Amount Of Tax Taxpayers Pay, Increase The Number Of People Who Pay Tax

Our current taxation system is an artifact of a time when people had jobs, which meant they had employers who could deduct income tax from their paychecks.

This system doesn’t work anymore. Many people no longer have employers. They have gigs. They have 1099s, not w-2s and w-4s. “Self-employment” is the new unemployment.

With no payroll person to deduct taxes from their pay, there are a lot of people who are essentially on the honor system. Many people are dishonorable.

I’m calling upon our legislature to collect more taxes by changing the way taxes are collected, not by raising taxes on the few honorable people who pay and from the shrinking numbers of people who have a job where a payroll person deducts taxes from their paychecks.

There are two ways the West Virginia legislature can collect more taxes. The first way is to increase taxes on the few who pay them. The second way is to collect taxes at point-of-purchase where everybody will have to pay the tax when they buy food, services, cars, clothing, gasoline or anything else.

Did you ever wonder how a drug dealer pays taxes? He probably doesn’t. It’s a cash business and even if he wanted to pay taxes he really can’t report income without incriminating himself.

Does it make you mad that drug dealers, prostitutes and others in cash businesses benefit from the things government provides but they don’t help pay for it like you do?

The legislature can right that injustice by dropping the income tax that only a few pay and imposing a sales or consumption tax that everybody pays.

West Virginia legislature, don’t increase taxes on the few who pay them, impose a tax that tax evaders can’t evade. Don’t increase the amount of tax each person pays, increase the number of people who pay tax.