Invitation to a Tea Party : Taxes: Paying them has never been more onerous or unfair; the ‘rich’ are far from it.

Congress did a real job on us last summer. They raised our tax rates and made them retroactive to the beginning of 1993. If you had a really good year, that’s good. But the bad news is you may be subject to the new 36% and 39.5% tax brackets. For example, if you are single and have a taxable income of more than $70,000, you are in the 36% bracket. Washington thinks you’re rich. In California, that will give you enough to live in a small bungalow.

Wasn’t there something in the Constitution about Congress passing laws that are retroactive? It’s bad enough for the living, but the estates of those who died last year between Jan. 1 and the mid-summer passage of the law will also suffer because Congress raised the federal estate tax rate. As an enrolled agent (a tax expert designation granted by the Internal Revenue Service), I don’t remember a year in which there was so much discontent and grousing about the amount of taxes that people have to pay.

Will Rogers said he didn’t make up jokes about what the government does; all he did was to report facts. Even the federal tax commissioner made a funny the other day when she said that she “runs the biggest fund-raising business in the United States: the Internal Revenue Service.”

I also like the jokes at the beginning of the tax form where it tells us how many hours and minutes it takes to gather the data and fill our various sections of the tax returns. Of course, the IRS office in Washington offers tax preparation service to members of Congress without charge. Staffers even go up to Capitol Hill to provide that convenience. It will make the bedraggled taxpayer even madder to learn that only 10% of the members of the committee that writes the tax laws fill out their own tax returns.

Just think how we could increase our national productivity and international competitiveness if we didn’t have to spend endless hours filling out tax returns because of the complexity of our current law.

My wife and I have three sons: a doctor, a lawyer and a graduate of Stanford University. When “the grad” got his first job, he called us all excited because he was “instant middle class.” “What do you mean, Dave,” we asked. “I am paying 28% in federal taxes and 7% in Social Security,” he replied.

I wasn’t initially surprised by his “sticker shock,” but I was when I researched how much taxes I paid when I got my first professional job in 1951: My highest federal tax bracket was 6% and my Social Security payroll tax was 1%.

People in the highest federal tax bracket--almost 40%-- will be little amused to learn this little historical fact: In the debate on the 16th Amendment to the Constitution in 1913 authorizing the federal income tax, critics were assured that the highest rate would never exceed 10%.

Our forebears dumped a lot of tea in Boston Harbor over the British Crown’s “taxation without representation.” Now we have representation, and things are worse. Over the past 39 years, the federal budget has been in deficit 33 years and now our national debt is $4.5 trillion.

We the people will pay for the deficit one way or the other--either in taxes or inflation. Interest on the national debt--more than $200 billion--now exceeds the projected budget deficit of $176 billion for next year. The current rise in interest rates is undoubtedly based on fear that inflation will again be a major problem.

As an enrolled agent, I am working hard helping taxpayers to calculate the cost of securities sold during the past year and to recall the exact date of purchase and sale. Therefore, I was shocked to learn that the President’s tax return did not provide the exact price Hillary Rodham Clinton paid for those future cattle contracts purchased nor the specific dates of purchase and sale.

Isn’t it wonderful, though, that she parlayed $1,000 into $100,000. Let’s see now, if the Treasury Department gave Mrs. Clinton $5 billion and she increased it 990%, that would pay for almost one-third of the federal budget of $1.5 trillion and we could abolish all income taxes on individuals. Well, I can dream, can’t I?