Nobody Expects a Spanish-American War tax

Is it truly possible for government to eliminate anything? Take the telephone excize tax for example. You probably never noticed it. It's on your phone bill. Go ahead, grab it. I'll wait

dum,de, dum,dee,dum

Got it? okay. Look at the breakdown of charges on the bill. You'll see the excise tax. Its three percent of your bill. No what that's for? It's a tax on the wealthy. That's right! We finally got the bastards. Those well-to-do scum are finally paying their fair extra share.

What's that? You're not wealthy? Then why do you suppose it's on your bill? Well maybe you need a bit of history then my friend...

Our chief weapon is apathy and ignorance...ignorance and apathy. Our two main weapons are apathy, ignorance and a complete incomprehensible tax code...Our three...our three main weapons are....I'll come in again

A short while ago (okay it was 108 years to be exact) your federal government was fighting a war. A war with the Spanish. To help keep all these wars from becoming jumbled we'll call this...the Spanish-American War. That's a good name. Anyway, wars are expensive. We know that. So how did the government decide to be fair to everyone and pay for a war that benefited everyone? That's right, they taxed the rich. In this case they added a tax onto phone service. After all, back around the turn of the century only the rich had phones. Made sense.

Then something strange happened that the government never planned on. We actually won the war quickly. In eighteen months to be exact. Seems as though the Spanish were not quite the formidable foe they are today.

So with the war over, the tax was unnecessary, right? **cough, cough** unnecessary? There's no such thing as an unnecessary tax.

So the tax stayed. The government kept collecting it. That is until the people started wising up. In 2000 Congress decided to repeal the tax. End of story, right? Nope, Bill Clinton decided that any tax was a tax worth fighting for so he vetoed the action. So the courts got involved. They decided the tax was wrong and ordered it removed. End of story then, right? Nope. the Bush Administration appealed and delayed its repeal. Nice to see Democrats and Republicans agreeing on something, hunh?

So now the appeals are over and the tax is officially dead. Not only that but the federal government has been ordered to send a refund to all phone owners for the past three years that they've been dragging their feet. Neat, hunh? The Bush administration has figured out a way to roadblock a tax cut and then turn it into an election year positive by sending you a nice little tax refund.

Now, all is not rosy in the excize tax world. They can still impose the tax on local calls, just not on long-distance calls. So a partial victory is all that you can hope for.

So the next time you hear someone claim that the best solution to solve a problem is to tax the rich (that's right, I'm talking to you alternative minimum tax) remember that today's wealthy my just be tomorrow's you.

Now, where is that comfy chair?