You readers have been presented with a series of challenging quizzes on topics such as Sharia law, healthcare, incest, and vigilante justice.
Let’s now shift to the world of taxation.
We all know governments routinely make life hard for taxpayers. The IRS, for example, is a rather brutal bureaucracy, as explained in this video. But I’m not sure the IRS can match either of these two examples of reprehensible taxation. And I’m not sure which one is worse.
Our first story comes from Switzerland, which normally gets high marks for modest taxation and respecting individual rights. But the municipality of Reconvilier is going to extraordinary lengths to pick the pockets of local dog owners. Her’s an excerpt from an AP report.
Reconvilier — population 2,245 humans, 280 dogs — plans to put Fido on notice if its owner doesn’t pay the annual $50 tax. Local official Pierre-Alain Nemitz says the move is part of an effort to reclaim hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes. He says a law from 1904 allows the village to kill dogs if its owner does not pay the canine charge. Nemitz told the AP on Monday that authorities have received death threats since news of the plan got out.
But if you think threatening to kill Rover and Fido is brutal, brace yourself for the next story. The government in King County, Washington, is taxing a family for an infant that passed away shortly after birth. Here’s part of the report from a local TV station.
Olivia Clark lived for only one hour. Doctors didn’t even expect her to survive birth. Now her family has a hard time understanding why the King County Medical Examiner has to review her death and charge $50. …Although her parents were from Yakima, they came to the University of Washington Medical Center for her delivery. As a result, Olivia died in King county. Her family soon learned the impact that would have when they received the funeral bill. “There was a little line on there near the bottom of the bill that said ‘King county death tax: $50.’ And we looked at that, and looked at that and looked at each other and said ‘what is that?’ Couldn’t believe that a little girl that lived for an hour has to pay a $50 tax,” said Larry. …The medical examiner instituted the $50 fee for cremations three years ago. This year, it included the fee for burials as well.
To be fair, the government didn’t impose a tax on the family because their child died. It’s a fee imposed on all funerals in the county. But it still is a bit macabre for the government to impose such a levy.
And we shouldn’t forget that the IRS has a 35 percent death tax for people who make the mistake of saving and investing too much money before they die, so grave-robbing by governments is not an unknown phenomenon.
So which example is worse? Normally, taxing a dead baby would trump everything, but the tax – while horrible – doesn’t actually target infants. The bureaucrats in Reconvilier, by contrast, are dusting off a 1904 law and threatening to kill people’s pets.
How do you vote?
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Agreed that the death tax is onerous, disruptive, and capricious. Agreed also that liberals view it as being nakedly redistributive. But, conceptually I don’t understand the critique that it is somehow a “tax on the dead.” Ultimately, it’s the heirs who pay the tax, not the dead guy. Without the death tax, the heirs receive a tax free windfall. That doesn’t seem right. If the heirs received income from any other source, it would be taxed. Why should an inheritance be any different?
“He says a law from 1904 allows the village to kill dogs if its owner does not pay the canine charge.”
The magic word in the Swiss case is “the village”. So what are the chances that your neighbors will show up at your house and kill your dog over 50 bucks? The guys you just had a beer with?
As long as it is a village thing is innocuous.
I would vote the $50 death tax for quite a few reasons:
For one, it is true that for many of us pets are a part of our family. (I have 3 dogs, 6 fish and 2 hamsters living with 5 humans.) However, owning a dog isn’t really a basic human right. There isn’t much more intimate than family relationships.
Second, it does seem particularly pathetic to send the family of a baby who died a tax bill, but everyone who loses a loved one has a million things to think about before paying the tax man. This tax does nothing than stick a thorn in your side at the moment you’re most emotionally vulnerable. It kicks you when you’re down.
Finally, this is another classic situation where anti-free marketers could point and say “hey, people are just ‘paying’ for the services they incur” when in fact, (similarly to the house that was left to burn because the homeowner didn’t make his fire department payment) this double-underscores the immeasurable cruelty that can come only from government. No institution invented by man could be so heartlessly vicious. Government is pure machine. A machine that turns tortuously slowly, such that if you happen to find yourself within the gears, you have the unenviable experience of watching yourself get crushed.