79-11-B5

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Miscellaneous II

Transcript A few months ago, about April Shower time, 130 million Americans (60 percent of our population) and hundreds of thousands of corporations filed income tax returns. Maybe we should have included a birthday card with our checks because the income tax was 65 years old. Wouldn't it be nice if it decided to retire? Back in 1914 when it was born it gave no indication it was going to become the biggest kid on the block and the most prolific money collector the world has ever seen. In these 65 years our population has a little more than doubled and our economy has grown to eight times what it was, based on constant dollars. But that lusty kid the income tax has grown to 76 times its original size--again figured in constant dollars so as to rule out inflation as a factor. It took in a little more than one quarter of a billion dollars in its first year and more than 200 billion in its 65th. From less than one penny out of each dollar of Gross National Product it's now taking more than 17. There are 243 times as many of us paying the tax now. Even though population barely doubled in 1914, only about 357,000 out of our 97 million people--those at the very top of the earning scale paid the tax compared to 87½ million--almost everyone in the work force today. And just as an added statistic, there are more than 20 times as many tax collectors. In 1914 we only had one for every 23,000 of us; now there is one for every 2500. Well, those are the vital statistics of our most unpopular senior citizen. Here is a word about the future. We've heard about the balanced budget down the road a few years . Unfortunately if it happens it won't be because our government changed its course or made government less costly as it should. Those who made the promise are aware that inflation is an unseen helper of the Internal Revenue Service. Take a married couple with two children and an income of around 20,000 dollars a year. If they get a cost-of-living pay raise--just enough to stay even, they won't stay even. That pay raise will nudge them into the next surtax bracket and they'll be $180 poorer after taxes in spite of the raise. If we assume that inflation will continue through 1981, Internal Revenue will collect an added $17 billion of undeserved revenue from cost-of-living pay raises alone. Last item and it also has to do with money. As you know, our fiscal year begins in October now, rather than July as it once did. The President submitted to Congress a $532 billion budget for the year beginning this October which he called "lean and austere" but which contained a $28 billion deficit. The Congress has in its wisdom reduced that deficit to $23 billion and believe it or not, without cutting a single dollar from any of the thousands of federal programs. They have approved a $532 billion dollar budget the same as the one submitted by the President and want credit for reducing the deficit by $5 billion. Congress after months of struggle has decided the tax revenues in 1981 will be $5 billion greater than the President's estimate. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.		Details Batch Number 79-11-B5 Production Date 07/27/1979 Book/Page Online PDF Audio Youtube? No
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