They'll do it every time!

I think it is unlikely, but there might just be a gopher somewhere in D.C. whose job it is to think up bright, uplifting names for legislation - such as the "USA PATRIOT Act," the "No Child Left Behind Act," the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" - that seem an almost egregious assault on sensibility and common sense (given the actual provisions of the laws they describe), as if giving the legislation a positive-sounding name will change the basic thuggish nature of those underlying provisions that seem, all too often, directed at anything but what the name suggests.

Back in April, several Congresscritters, among them one Jerrold Nadler of New York's 8th District, introduced something called the "Tax Equity Act," whose basic provisions, according to said Concresscritter's web site, call for the IRS to "adjust federal tax rates to account for the actual cost of living in major metropolitan areas."

The idea behind this law is for its sponsors' constituents - and others who make the big bucks in the big cities - to pay Federal tax at a lower rate than people who earn the same amount of money in, say, Wyoming. The bill's sponsors say the justification for cutting rates for high-earning city people is that they already pay a lot of what they earn for things like housing and utilities (areas that, by the way, are heavily regulated by big-city governments), so cutting federal rates is only "fair."

But why is it so expensive to live in a big city? (The bill's sponsors, among others, view the phenomenon as a self-evident yet mysterious fact of life.) One of the bill's sponsors, one Nita Lowey, said something that points directly at the source of the problem, noting that residents of the New York metropolitan area pay "some of the highest property taxes in the country." (Besides which there is also a state income tax, the top rate of which went from 6.85% to 8.97% retroactive to January 1, 2009, as well as a city income tax of up to 3.648%.)

It's a cinch that the high cost of living in the big cities is due in large part to local government regulation and taxation. Why? Because taxes and regulatory fees paid by businesses have to be passed on to customers, else those business would have to close their doors. And when everyone is passing the cost of government on to everyone else, things will become more expensive.

Consider New York's tax debt burden. In New York, according to CNN, the per capita share of state debt is $3135. That's $12,500 for a family of four! (In Wyoming, the per capita tax burden is $77.)

As introduced, the law does not call for any rates to be adjusted upward in other regions to make up the obvious shortfall in revenue such an adjustment would cause, but that really doesn't matter. Whether rates for other regions are changed or not, it would still fall to everyone else - taxpayers who don't live in overtaxed cities - to make up the difference, one way or another. The preferred way these days seems to be to just dig the deficit hole a little deeper, but one can only do that for so long before having to pay the piper.

In effect, the justification being offered for having residents of cities pay lower Federal tax rates is because they already pay a lot in local taxes. In my opinion, that's too bad, but it's a circumstance that's self-inflicted and voluntarily endured.

When a politician talks about making taxes more "fair," hide your wallet.

Cheers...