As the firecrackers explode for the celebration of our nation’s birthday this weekend, I can’t help but think about our government, its huge deficit, and why this problem exists.  I know “tax” is a dirty word, but taxes are an essential part of keeping our country moving.   They keep the highways working, the skies safe from terrorists, and even help out those less fortunate.   I am not here to debate the government’s inefficiencies.  We all know that when any entity (public or private) holds a monopoly and has the ability to print an endless supply of money, a situation exists that creates words such as pork barrel, watchdog, wasteful, corruption, and Blagojevich.   (Sorry, I had to put him in this category.)

What we as United States citizens should be asking this Fourth of July is why our federal, state and many local governments are in such financial turmoil when they are the entities collecting taxes?  Let’s take a hard look at the revenue side of taxes.  Here are a few facts (Source: Internal Revenue Service):

1) The top 25% of the US population earners paid 86.3% of all income taxes.

2) The bottom 50% of earners paid 2.7% of all income taxes.

3) Those earners in the middle 25% paid 11% of all income taxes.

The U.S. tax code is “absolutely broken” and the only way to fix it is to spread the burden to lower-and middle-income earners, Scott Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation, told CNBC Thursday.  “The United States leans more heavily on the top 10 percent of earners than any other country on Earth and our poor people actually have the lowest income tax burden of any industrialized country,” he said.

The United States government is on a path that is completely unsustainable.  I don’t believe we will be the next Greece given our ability to raise taxes and cut spending.   However, if politicians don’t start making hard decisions today, sustaining the status quo will make those decisions much more difficult and might have potentially violent repercussions.

While I don’t have any answers this month, I do have a suggestion:  As you start to examine the presidential candidates coming out of the woodwork, pay special attention to any that have the courage to bring this issue to the forefront.   Those are the kinds of leaders this country needs.

Darren Nakos, CCIM
Resort Realty Capital
111 Main Street
Frisco, CO 80443-0630
(720)-663-1430

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