Exactly why are so many individuals against a simple small business tax in the United States? Okay, so they would claim that they’re not against any such thing in principle, but only in practice, in terms of the very high rates in particular. But how high are these rates, exactly?
For many, a small business tax amounts to no more than around thirty percent of gross earnings. A third of all income sounds like a lot, however throw in all the local, state, and federal tax breaks that you can get, as well as tax credits along with other special provisions for specific circumstances, and many a company with under a hundred employees will wind up paying at most somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty percent, give or take a few points.
That’s a fairly modest form of small business tax, is it not? But why then do so many rail against it? Exactly why do people not feel like contributing to the common good, whether in theory or practice? Could it be merely a matter of greed? Or perhaps is it in fact a very deep-seated alienation? And not only are businessmen and women are in opposition to such taxes but even people who do not own a small business!
It’s not simply that these people hope to one day be business owners themselves and thus identify with the (imagined) plight of business owners. It’s really a deep sense of alienation, even if they don’t recognize it themselves as such. Such individuals do not believe they have much in common with the wider society, whatever lip-service they may pay to societal conventions. Thus they don’t feel there to be any reason to contribute.
They would contribute to that which they believe to be important. So what is it about America where so many of its citizens will wave the flag yet not vote with their pocketbooks?
