All weekend

All weekend I have been struggling to come up with a more fair tax structure and tax system.

Taxes are necessary and vital. I feel the tax system as it stands now is really unfair.

You get taxed when you make the money, you get taxed when you spend the money, you get taxed when the left over money you have is used to make mo' money, you get taxed on the property that you bought with the taxed money, and finally when you die that money and property that you have will be taxed again.

Although a single point of taxation would seem ideal, I don't think it would work or be more fair, because many taxes pay for certain services that I never use.

I will give an example of an unfair tax in a usage situation.
When you get the tags, title and license for a car you pay fees for that privilege of driving. Which I understand the need to pay fees to support the infrastructure that provides you license, but lets say those taxes where going for something else, such as roads.

Well on the surface it would make sense to pay taxes for roads when you by a car, but let's say you are an old lady that drives twice a week. The tax seems a lot less fair, because you don't use the roads as much as a person who commutes everyday. Although a tax does make sense on gasoline to pay for the upkeep and building of new roads. The more you use the more you pay in taxes.

Although the personal usage tax model makes sense in some cases (national parks could charge higher usage fees), it does not make sense on issues that are harder to judge if you are using them are not. For example, national defense. National defense is not something you can opt out of if you want you (where roads you can ride a bike, national parks you can skip,and so on and so fourth). I have yet to come up with a useful name for the defense model of taxation, or a place that I think it should happen. Right now on my electric bill I pay a 24 dollar county fire tax (which increases my electric bill by about 50 percent), should I be allowed to opt out of that tax because I don't use electricity?

Lets take the usage model and apply it to a common issue: schools. Should the people who have children pay all the usage fees (formerly called taxes) to keep schools running, and the people who do not have children should be left out of such a fee. This would seem more fair because, if you wanted to home school you children you could opt out of the usage fees.

Would that make the price of schools unbearable for certain people (the poor), would the price of school become so expensive that it would be cheaper for parents to quit their jobs and home school their children or would the quality of schools get better because the parents are demanding more accountability, would schools become more accountable with the money they do get because they are answering to a smaller group which is actually paying for the services.

How much would the government have to spend in financial assistance for people who could not pay for school?


On a side note:
Another problem that I have with taxes is that there is not a itemized break down of the federal taxes that I pay and what department is getting the money. I would like to see an itemized breakdown of what percent of money goes to what governmental department, I bet once that happened some departments would disappear, and my taxes would go down.

update
I was incorrect in saying that we pay taxes when we die. I don't do that often so I am unfamiliar with that.
Death tax may be coming back

cube