Myth: a fictitious or imaginary story; a false belief. [Source: The American Heritage Dictionary.]
Myth: Taxes are illegal and/or anti-constitutional.
This is a popular topic on the Internet and in high-school debate clubs. Groups of so-called “tax protesters” keep promoting various theories about illegal nature of income taxes. To date, none of them won in court. The moment they win, I will stop paying taxes myself. You think I enjoy paying myself? Meanwhile, we must pay taxes, and this is a federal law. In other words, not paying taxes is against the law with all the usual consequences.
Myth: The rich pay less tax than the poor.
The following quote is from the Money magazine [Jan. 1996]: “While pro a flat tax, 64% say the rich ought to pay more.” Whether they ought to or not is debatable, but it helps to know what they are paying now. According to Taxes for Dummies, the wealthiest 1% of the American population pay 25% of all income taxes.
Myth: US taxpayers pay more than other nations.
From Parade magazine [4.13.97]: “The U.S. ranks 11th in the percentage of federal revenues derived from individual income taxes (39%) and 70th in the percentage from corporate taxes (10%).”
Myth: The IRS is the source of all our tax problems.
In fact, tax laws are created and constantly changed by the Congress. The IRS simply serves as the administrator of the law, just like any other law enforcement agency. The IRS’s “contribution” to the tax nightmare is that they interpret and sometimes arbitrarily apply the laws – but they do not create them.