Taxes Today and Yesterday

By Maddie

Imagine if you earned $25,000 dollars a year. That’s plenty of money to use on clothes and food right? But, that was before taxes of course. On the Wikipedia page1 about taxes it say that the 2003 – 2010 the tax rate is 35% of of that $25,000 dollars you earned. That is $8750 out of the $25,000! And that’s just income tax, not the taxes on your house, gasoline, or many other things. On the National Tax Federation website it says that Americans will have to work three months before they will be able to pay this years tax obligation. And, that is if you skip eating.

Now, imagine you live in the soon to be America, in the year 1773. You may have heard the rumors about the upcoming “Boston Tea Party”. You weren’t sure what it was about but even the sound of it made you excited. You believe that it was about the tax2 on tea. Everyone was very mad about the taxation, until they heard that a large shipment of tea was coming into the harbor. Then then they knew how they were going to get their revenge.

Now, back to day. You need to realize that the Colonists had a very different tax system then we do today. For an example I am going to give you this quote from the U.S. Treasury’s3 web page:

“For most of our nation’s history, individual taxpayers rarely had any significant contact with Federal tax authorities as most of the Federal government’s tax revenues were derived from excise taxes, tariffs, and customs duties”

You see that colonist did not have income tax, or really any contact with there federal government at all. Now days most people pay thousands of dollars in income taxes,plus some more for the rest of the taxes that the government has. Now think the colonist only paid taxes on the things they bought nothing else, but they still rebelled. But people now have to pay thousands of dollars in taxes and none of them care. That is a little strange isn’t it?