Several professors have started a website to protest the recent tax bill because it deprives the government of revenue. Their proposal, however, will deprive the government of even more revenue. James Taranto writes at The Wall Street Journal:
We'd like to offer a last-minute nomination for the nitwittiest idea of the year:GiveItBackForJobs.com. This is the cognitive elite's version of a tax revolt, made all the more comical because it is the product of two of America's top universities. (They are Yale and Cornell, so that our Harvard readers have reason to feel even smugger than usual today.)
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These profs--Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker and law scholars Robert Hockett of Cornell and Daniel Markovits of Yale--are obviously left-wing progressive Democrats. ...So, how do they propose that you protest the absence of a tax increase? The first step is to enter your filing status and your best guess as to your 2011 adjusted gross income into a calculator on the homepage, which will "calculate the magnitude of your tax cut." (By "tax cut," they mean the tax increase that was averted.) The number is calculated to the cent, a level of precision that is utterly false. You won't actually know your adjusted gross income until you've finished the first page of your 2011 tax return, in 2012; and your taxable income varies further depending on deductions and exemptions.
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They don't want you to give your money to the government. Instead, they want you to "give back . . . by making donations to organizations that promote fairness, economic growth, and a vibrant middle class." They suggest Habitat for Humanity, the Salvation Army, the Children's Aid Society and the Nurse Family Partnership, but you can choose another charity if you like.
One advantage of this approach, as the professors note, is that "contributions to all of the selected charities are tax deductible." That means "donations made through this site draft the government as a partner in funding the projects that they support."
To translate that obfuscatory verbiage into plain English, if you follow the professors' method of protesting your low tax bill, you will lower your tax bill even further. Talk about a win-win!
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Come to think of it, we're being too hard on these guys. They've made a profound discovery: Private, voluntary charity is far more effective than coercive federal bureaucracies at helping people in need.
