Fun With Taxes and Polling

A couple of recent stories on taxes and polls really made me laugh.

The first story tells us that about 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. That is a staggering number for sure. That is just about at the number where the takers (majority) can dictate to the takees (minority) at will and there is nothing that the takees can do about it. That is a very good working definition of tyranny by the way.

The second story is about a Gallup poll which states that “Americans Split on Whether Their Income Taxes Are Too High.” 45 percent of the population thinks that their tax burden is just about right and 48 percent of the population thinks that their taxes are too high.

Wow, about half the population pays no taxes and about half the population thinks that their taxes are just fine. Shocker. People who pay no taxes are happy with the taxes they pay.

Conversely, the other half of the country that carries the entire burden for the non-paying half thinks that their taxes are too high.

What would we do without polling?

So here comes my value add to this little story. 47 percent pay no taxes but only 45 percent think that their tax burden is fair. That means 2 percent of the people who pay NO taxes think that they are overtaxed.

You can’t make this up.