Tax Day
The season has arrived, not spring, not summer, but tax season. It’s that time of the year when you have to start paying your taxes for services that you may not even want or never asked for. The process is lengthy and confusing - unless you hired someone to do it for you, in which that case, it’s pretty expensive. In particular, you might question what right does the government have to take money from you, the money you that never consented to paying. In that case, we have to trace all the way back to 1862 when Abraham Lincoln instituted American taxes to help pay for the Civil War. However, the tax was repealed ten years later. But in 1894, Congress enacted a flat rate Federal income tax and was ruled unconstitutionally the following year by the Supreme Court due to the direct tax not being apportioned according to the population of each state. Taxes took a long time before it became part of the constitution under the 16th Amendment in 1913. And ever since then, you start hearing our nation groan.
We hate it but we still have to do it. But, where does our money go after turning in our taxes. Turns out the U.S. Treasury divides all federal spending into three groups: mandatory spending, discretionary spending and interest on debt. Mandatory spending refers to the budget that must be set aside for certain programs or initiatives as set forth by the government or governing authority. Most of the mandatory spending budget goes to social security and medicare. Discretionary spending refers to the portion of the budget that is decided by Congress through the annual appropriations process each year and most of its budget goes to military, government, and education. Now that you know where your money goes, you might feel less guilty.