It's not often one thinks that there should be another form to fill out with your taxes, but tell me what you think of this: when you file your return you can fill out a form that will allocate your tax money to federal (or even state) budget items you would like to support. Let's say that a percentage of your taxes would go into the general fund to be evenly distributed to everything, but that the rest can go to where you want it to go.
Example: your taxes are $1000 this year. 50% of that goes in the general fund to get distributed to every budget item. The rest can go to as many budget items as you select. So if you want to send more money for HumVee armor you can check Military/Defense and if you want to support the Arts you can check the NEA box. Then $250 of you taxes will go to the military and another $250 will give some artist a grant.
The main benefit of this is giving the taxpayers direct control over what their taxes are being used for. Possible side benefits include less fighting in Congress over the budget as part of it will be pre-determined (unlikely, but anything's possible.)
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Same idea as "privatize our tax system"
Wow. See this comment. It says it all.
Seems like the only new wrinkle I put on this idea is the certain percentage going into the general fund.
My thought would be only pay for what you support. Removes the budget issue and gives the people complete control over the government. Maybe no one would pay their taxes maybe a manadatory flat tax of 10% and then pay extra on the programs you believe in. But I think it would not be needed.
This is a cool isea....but who would allocate finances to the inteligence services, or to the traffic police or even the internal revenue themselves?
I know being a parent I would allocate monies to schooling and education along with public transport and health....my single friends may not?
This is a good idea and I understand a website like this doesn't give the user an oppertunnity to elaborate but it might be a good idea to put safeguards in place.
Well, if you want taxpayers to micromanage the allocation of tax money, you could just change our form of government from a representative constitutional republic (as it was founded) to a direct democracy (which was warned against by the likes of Madison, et al). But then again, if our government was still confined to that original design, we wouldn't need any income tax at all. Hmm.