5/10/2008

do not spend your rebate

Exciting news! My IRS rebate posted to my bank account this week. I've got $600 to spend in Europe I didn't have a week ago.

Except, I don't. Don't spend your $300 or $600. It's not money. It's a loan. When the government spends money on war, but it doesn't tax people who have money to pay for war, it instead borrows money from those people. The trouble with that is that those people want their money back.

And they want it back with interest. In other words, this is not a rebate. It's a tax.

If you want to decrease your tax burden, convince your members of Congress to reduce defense spending, reduce agricultural subsidies, reduce deductions in the tax code, and increase enforcement against large tax cheaters.

Now that would lead to a nice rebate.