The basic Republican lie about taxes is that money (or wealth) is taxed. It’s not.
What is taxed is instead the transfer of money (or wealth). There’s a big difference.
When you buy something, and the sale is taxed, what’s taxed is the transfer of your money to the vendor – not the money itself.
When a wealthy person dies and an estate tax is triggered, what’s taxed is not the wealth but the transfer of that wealth to the person’s heirs.
When a worker is taxed on the income he receives from an employer, what’s being taxed is not the wealth that is earned but the transfer of that wealth to that worker, from that employer.
If the person happens to be self-employed, he’s being taxed on the net income that has been transferred to him by his customers, after deducting his expenses to his suppliers.
Similarly, when a corporation’s profits are taxed, what’s taxed is that corporation’s net income, which has been transferred to that corporation by its customers, after deducting the corporation’s expenses, which the corporation has paid to its suppliers.
Republicans vociferously deny all of this. They claim, for example, that stockholders are “taxed twice on a corporation’s income – first at the corporate level, and then at the individual level.”
But instead, those are actually not monies at all that are being taxed – two separate transfers of money are being separately taxed – and a corporation isn’t ever taxed on its money (such as Republicans presume).
And they similarly claim that when a very rich person’s wealth is subject to an estate tax (which they lie and call a “death tax” even though fewer than 1% of people are rich enough for their estates to trigger any tax when transferred; so, this “death tax” applies to only very few “deaths,” and death is never really taxed), the money is “being taxed twice,” because (supposedly) “it” was taxed “while it was being built up” (when actually “it” had not been taxed at all), and then is being taxed “yet again” as it goes to the children or other heirs.
The only major exception to this transaction-basis of taxes is “property taxes” – the tax paid each year on real estate one owns. But that’s not a federally applied tax anyway, so it’s irrelevant to Republicans’ assertions in the ongoing federal tax-debates.
What is the purpose of all these Republican lies? All of these lies challenge some form of tax – specifically, a form of tax that covers a wealth-transfer that, not coincidentally, the wealthiest 1% have purchased the Republican Party in order to fight and argue against. It’s their only “moral argument” against taxes on the top 1%.
But does a typical car-salesman argue that there is some type of “moral principle” that should prevent him from being taxed “yet again” on income that came to him via his employer’s sale of cars to customers? Does he say “That’s double-taxation” on the money that went from the customer to the dealer to this employee?
No (not unless he’s a fool, or else a liar himself). Ordinary people aren’t as crooked as the propaganda-makers of the Republican Party are (and need to be). Then, why do the few extremely wealthy people complain against the estate tax by using basically the same ridiculous false reasoning?
And why do corporate stockholders use that very same fraudulent reasoning when arguing against taxes on capital gains or dividends (“It’s double-taxation!”)?
Rich people, and their political agents, do this because there are enough suckers out there who will believe such lies.
Honest individuals don’t lie about taxes.
And intelligent individuals don’t believe the lies about taxes – and they reject the liars who peddle those lies.
The only way to stop fraudsters from fraud, or to stop Republicans from their lies, is to punish them with defeat for doing it. That would put the Republican Party out of business.
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
