Each year, with very few exceptions, those that have some sort of income are required by law to file a tax return. As it currently stands, tax returns, for whatever reason, are considered private information and therefore not subject to being publicly disclosed. Yet, consider this, property taxes, which are a yearly obligation for those that are home owners, are publicly disclosed. This would presuppose that the need behind income taxes not being disclosed is not nearly as sacrosanct as some might imagined.
Additionally, the appropriate payment amount for one’s income tax is based upon the calculations so of, and the voluntary compliance by its citizens, of which, because currently the filing of those personal income taxes is private, basically leaves the good enforcement of the accuracy of those calculations and compliance to the understaffed and underbudgeted Internal Revenue Service.
Consider this, though, if personal income tax returns were public, one would expect to see a significant increase in the whistleblowing from taxpayers in aggregate -- in regards to returns that appeared to them to be suspicious. Additionally, in consideration, that some companies make it known that they don’t want you to discuss your salary with others, as well as seemingly doing everything in their power to keep the payrate of their employees, secret – we can correctly surmise that secrecy of this sort probably has a lot more to do with management trying to manipulate and to control the payrate of employees to their self-serving benefit, and therefore the public divulgence of that income, would be both fair-play and quite illuminating.
It is true that a significant amount of people have a real curiosity about how much other people, especially those that they work with, or are friends with, or live nearby, actually earn in a given year; of which, there is also the inconvenient fact that for some people there is perhaps an unhealthy desire to “keep up with Joneses”; yet, there is also truth in the statement that citizens of this great nation are entitled to know what other people are actually earning, which will thereby help them to get perspective, to negotiate, as well as to perhaps re-evaluate where they are at, and finally it might just inspire them to be more diligent about going after their own goals.
In general, transparency is empowering for those that have little or no power, and a source of annoyance for those that are dishonest, double-talking, double-dealing, and deceptive. Those that don’t pay their fair share of taxes, pretty much know it; whereas, those that play by the rules and pay their fair share, also know it. What is unknown, is how many taxpayers are not paying their fair share; of which, the public disclosure of all tax payers’ income tax returns, would go an awful long way to answering that very question.
There was a time when the government had no national income tax, but relied instead upon tariffs, duties, excise taxes as well as land sales to fund its governmental responsibilities; of which, upon ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1913, the income tax became part and parcel of this county. Back then, as reported by Wikipedia.org, in 1913, “Approximately three percent of the population was subject to the income tax,” whereas today, that income tax, affects a significant swath of Americans, of which, in fairness to them, they should know for a certainty as to whether or not our progressive income tax system really has those that make more, pay more.