For those students who work, tax time often means a spending spree fueled by tax refunds. After a year of looking at paychecks whittled down by taxes, it feels good to get a check for a few hundred dollars. Too often, routine actions – such as paying taxes – become so embedded in daily functioning that they go without question. So let us consider the concept of taxes.

The merit of taxes is widely accepted: After all, the government has to pay for schools, roads and bombs … lots of bombs. Since most people accept the principle behind taxes, they are compliant in paying them. Of course, if you refuse to pay your taxes, the Internal Revenue Service may seize all of your property and, if you blatantly cheat or defraud the government, even throw you in jail.

Benjamin Franklin once wrote, “(In) this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Taxes are a universal trend and there are very few places you can go without being subjected to one tax or another. In the United States, income taxes are deducted directly from pay, sales and excise taxes are charged when making purchases, and property taxes are levied on the items that you already own. If you were to buy a car, taxes would first be taken from your paycheck, you would then have to pay a tax when purchasing the vehicle (and also when buying insurance and gasoline), then every year you would be charged a tax for owning the car. This does not bother many people, because it is widely agreed upon that taxes are necessary and beneficial, although there is much bickering about the specifics.

If you were to consider a single dollar that you paid in taxes, here is how the government would allocate it: 42.2 cents would go toward the military, 22.1 cents to Social Security, 10.2 cents to interest, 8.7 cents to safety-ned programs, 4.4 cents to education, 3.9 cents to government and law enforcement, 3.3 cents to housing development and less than three cents each to science programs, commerce/transportation and international affairs.

Gallup polls have shown that Americans believe the federal government wastes over half of every tax dollar. While this is probably a bit of an exaggeration, a significant amount of tax revenue is wasted every year or is spent on seemingly frivolous enterprises. Each year, the government spends over $100 billion on payments that never should be made.

While this money is wasted outright, billions more are spent on government programs that are as close to useless as can be imagined. Some examples provided by Doug Bandow in Forbes magazine include $30 million that was spent to increase mango production and sales in Pakistan (which failed abysmally) and $765,828 that was devoted to bringing an International House of Pancakes franchise to Washington, D.C.

Perhaps you are somebody who does not support wasteful spending or who does not want to fund military weaponry that will be used to kill people on the other side of the world. You want all of your tax dollars to go toward education and healthcare for those in need. Well, there is a theory called conscientious objection, which argues that people should not be forced to pay military taxation, and some people follow this by simply refusing to pay taxes. However, conscientious objection is not officially recognized and most tax resisters are able to avoid paying taxes only by living below the required income level to be taxed or by going completely off the grid.

When the average person refuses to pay taxes, they receive a visit from the IRS, who may deem it necessary to place a lien on their property. The government collecting taxes could almost be compared to the mafia collecting protection money. The mafia may approach a shop owner and ask that they pay a fee for protection; if the shop owner refuses to pay, the mafia might come back and damage the shop. With taxes, the government demands that you pay an array of fees; if you refuse for long enough, agents might come to your house, arrest you and strip you of everything you own. However, this comparison casts the government in an unfair light; taxes are, of course, incorruptibly benevolent.

There are some individuals that can get around paying taxes. These are mostly corporations. As highlighted in an article in USA Today, there are many large companies that manage to reach a zero tax rate. These companies manage to avoid taxes by taking advantage of loopholes in laws. This is a benefit that comes to corporations that spend millions of dollars every year lobbying legislators so that these loopholes remain open. Average Americans who cannot afford their own congressional representative will have to continue paying taxes, and some of that tax money will go to subsidize the very corporations that are buying out their representatives.

Taxes are not inherently bad; they are needed for public ventures such as education, transportation and national defense. However, taxes are not optional and the money is often wasted or spent on undertakings that may be objected to by the taxpayer. As a citizenry, we should be more vigilant of how our tax dollars are spent and demand changes when investments are being tilted away from our preferences. Just because taxes are a routine part of life does not mean that we should allow corruption and waste to become routine as well.

Jason Roche is a Collegian columnist and can be reached [email protected].