{"id":7898,"date":"2010-08-31T06:29:06","date_gmt":"2010-08-31T11:29:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=7898"},"modified":"2010-08-31T06:29:06","modified_gmt":"2010-08-31T11:29:06","slug":"brian-j-noggle-tax-hypocrite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/31\/brian-j-noggle-tax-hypocrite\/","title":{"rendered":"Brian J. Noggle: Tax Hypocrite"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Time for me to come out of the closet as it were: <strong>I am a tax hypocrite.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Not to get too deeply into it, but one of the advantages of government-sanctioned marriage is the tax benefits, or at least the fact we get to only have to pay the accountant for one form.  Since I think the government should probably get out of the marriage sanctioning business entirely <em>but<\/em> I take advantage of the offer, <strong>I am a hypocrite!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t think that the government should ladle out tax credits for behavior it likes, such as buying the right air conditioner, buying a house, or buying the <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/16\/im-stimulated\/\" target=\"_blank\">correct clothes washing machine<\/a>, but I sometimes take those tax credits (although I missed out on the washing machine stimulus payola I mentioned due to laziness and, frankly, lack of enthusiasm for the project).  Ergo, <strong>I am a hypocrite!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, I have argued passionately against the government taking tax money to redistribute to individuals for individual benefit even above the lofty arguments that every individual having more (of others&#8217; property) makes a better, more egalitarian nation.  However, I still pay my FICA and social security taxes.  <strong>Because I don&#8217;t practice what I preach!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I think there are a lot of Federal government programs that are not just a bad idea, such as the Department of Education or Department of Energy, but some are damn immoral (funding abortions around the world).  However, I don&#8217;t deduct that percentage from my quarterly taxes because <strong>I am a damned hypocrite!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Now that we have my admission out of the way, can we separate the tax code and its thousands of pages of rulings and regulations from a reasoned discussion of principles?<\/p>\n<p>No, of course not.  Many of the people I <em>discuss<\/em> issues with proudly lack principles, and all they have going for them is ad homenims, tu quoques, and day-old bon mots.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Time for me to come out of the closet as it were: I am a tax hypocrite. Not to get too deeply into it, but one of the advantages of government-sanctioned marriage is the tax benefits, or at least the fact we get to only have to pay the accountant for one form. Since I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7898"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7901,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7898\/revisions\/7901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}