There’s no earthly reason for Taxmageddon

In 1938 my mother lived in Mercer County, N.J., about five miles from an area known as Grover’s Mill. A young man, Orson Welles, broadcast a Halloween-eve show that claimed that Martians had landed in Grover’s Mill.

As families tuned into the show, many believed the invasion to be true, including my mother and her two siblings. Living so close to the landing zone, perhaps even within the range of the deadly heat rays described in the broadcast, they told my grandparents that the family had to flee in their one available car.

My maternal grandfather died when I was 5, but I knew him for a few years before his death, and I heard many stories over the years from my mother and uncle. “Pop,” as the kids called him, had an eighth-grade education but supported the family by working in a rug mill and playing semi-pro baseball.

Pop also ruled the family, and when he said something, it was true, at least to the Kelty brood. So when the kids begged him to flee the heat rays, he announced that the whole thing was bunk, they were going nowhere, and if it were true they would just stay and fight the Martians as best they could.

Pop had a gun that had never been used on Martians, but the kids thought if anyone could handle a Martian with a heat ray it would be their Pop.

As this Halloween approaches, radio and TV hosts tell us that the tax world as we know it soon will come to an end. On Jan. 1, 2013, a phenomenon known as Taxmageddon will strike our country.

It will not be limited to Grover’s Mill and no Martians will be involved. Instead, this catastrophe will be the work of other-worldly beings perhaps more sinister, known as members of Congress.

I can’t help but think if Pop were still alive he would assure each of us in the extended family that the radio and TV hosts were playing us for fools, that there was no way that we could be caught in this Taxmageddon thing.

Pop would tell us that there could, logically, be no way that these beings called members of Congress would visit such horror upon us. And if they should try such a thing, we would just let them know that they can’t get away with something like that.

Now I know there’s some New Yorker out there who is thinking, “Sure, if Pop lived his whole life in New Jersey he’d probably welcome a quick end with a Martian heat ray.” But, joking aside, are we really the kind of people who will just allow this to happen to us?

Mother Bear of the Berenstain Bears said, “With privilege comes responsibility,” or maybe it was Voltaire, but no matter. Ten weeks ahead of Taxmageddon can we refuse to accept the passivity of our Congress to our impending fate and just ask them, “Where’s the responsibility?”

In 10 weeks employee’s payroll taxes rise, middle- to upper-middle-class families pay a higher alternative minimum tax, married couples lose some protection from the “marriage penalty,” the child tax credit drops in amount, adoptions become more expensive, and teachers can no longer deduct classroom supplies.

Rates will rise for everyone. The rich will pay more, perhaps pleasing the left. The low and middle incomes will pay more, and there will be a significant increase in the percentage of taxpayers who will pay the income tax, perhaps pleasing the right.

The conservative Heritage Foundation, in a chart released Feb. 19, shows a huge spike in the percentage of non-income-taxpayers following the Reagan 1986 Tax Reform Act and the Bush 2001 tax cuts, from about 15 percent to 40 percent when Bush left office. Obama tax cuts have increased that figure to 49.5 percent in 2009.

We should have a collective discussion of what the “right” percentage is, and then take action based on our beliefs, not by the accident of inaction.

It’s almost Taxmageddon time, a spectacle that we’ve watched unfold as if we were governed by Martians. Maybe Pop was wrong – they did land in Grover’s Mill and their takeover is finally complete.

James R. Hamill is the director of Tax Practice at Reynolds, Hix & Co. in Albuquerque. He can be reached at jimhamill@rhcocpa.com.>