Crappy Tax Day!

 

by Pa Rock

Bent-Over Taxpayer

My congressman, Jason Smith, a small town Republican from one of the more economically depressed areas of the state of Missouri, has been in Congress about a dozen years, and, I'm certain, plans on lounging around its marbled halls a few more decades.  Jason must have hit all of the right cocktail parties during his early years in Congress because a couple of years ago he was appointed Chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, the group assigned with the important task of writing most of the federal tax code, the reams of fine print that lays out how, in exacting detail, the richest people in America can avoid paying taxes altogether. while the rest of us worker bees pick up their share of the tab along with our own.

Jason goes on one or more Fox News shows weekly to pat himself on the back and brag about all of the money "average" Americas are going to be saving thanks to Trump's "big, beautiful" revenue bill which Jason shamelessly promoted and the Republican House gleefully passed.

We were going to be rolling in the dough, that was a promise from Donald John Trump and one dutifully endorsed by his lackeys like Jason Smith.

Well, today is tax day, a good time to look back and see if the promises made were actually kept.

First let's look at the national average tax savings.   National Public Radio (NPR) reported this morning that the average refund is increasing by around $350.00.  That's not exactly rolling in the dough even in good times, and with the price of gas skyrocketing due to Trump's ill-advised and impulsive war on Iran, $350.00 will get eaten up in gas before the summer travel season even arrives.  Between high gas prices, tariffs, and inflation in general, most Americans are far worse off economically than they were when Trump returned to office in January of 2025 - and they know it - and Trump and Jason Smith know it.  (The mass of voters in Smith's district, though, will never hear the truth about our sad economy from their congressman, because he avoids them like the plague.)

But I wanted more than just national numbers.  I happened to have the last four years of my tax returns within easy reach and spent some time yesterday poring over them.   I wanted to know if the big, beautiful bill had lowered the amount of taxes I pay - like Trump and Jason Smith promised America that it would.

First of all, in actual money sent to the government, I paid more in 2025 (a Trump year) that in any of the three preceding Biden years:  16% more than in 2022, 7% more than in 2023, 8% more than in 2024.

But those figures are misleading because though my sources of income did not change over those years, my amount of "taxable" income rose each year - thanks in part, no doubt, to new tax rules hurriedly being penned by the Ways and Means Committee to shift even more of the burden of paying for government services, infrastructure, and war away from those who can afford to pay their fair share but don't want to, onto the backs of those of us who are already bearing most of the tax burden.

Trump's close friend, the late billionaire hotelier Leona Helmsley, diagnosed the situation correctly when she infamously said "We don't pay taxes.  Only the little people pay taxes."  Helmsley, also known as "The Queen of Mean" later went to prison for not paying taxes.  That was back when there was a God.

But based solely on "taxable" income, my federal taxes under Trump were up in 2022 and 2024, and down only two-tenths of one percent when compared to 2023.  HELL, I DIDN'T EVEN GET MY $350.00!

(Note:  My state taxes also went up those four years - in terms of actual dollars and as percentages of my taxable income.  Taxes are very important in Missouri because they help to fund tuition for the children of the already well-off to attend private and religious schools on taxpayer dollars - as God intended.)

Trump and Jason Smith lied to me - and they lied to America.  The big, beautiful bill was just one more way to transfer America's wealth into the pockets of the one percent, the oligarchs, and the Epstein class!

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!!!