The collective gasp you may have heard at about 9:35 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 26, came from millions of patriotic Americans reacting to a smiling, smug Donald Trump saying that it was “smart” for him not to have paid any taxes on hundreds of millions of dollars in income. Though after the debate he claimed he “ never said” what 84 million people watched him say, Trump’s comment speaks volumes about his worldview.
Indeed, Trump appears to have avoided paying taxes in the past, though little is known about his recent income taxes. Has this strategy been effective? Yes. Enriching? For him. But “smart”? No. Dodging taxes is, quite simply, unpatriotic.
Trump and some of his supporters may believe that they simply are following in the hallowed American tradition of objecting to taxation. The American Revolution had its roots in revolts against the Stamp Act and the Tea Act, which inspired colonists to demand an end to “taxation without representation.” Seven decades later, another famed American dissident, Henry David Thoreau, refused to pay his taxes rather than support the federal government in pursuing what he considered an unprovoked war against Mexico and an immoral policy of protecting slavery.
So is Trump simply emulating the brave tea party patriots or engaging in Thoreau-style civil disobedience? Not at all. He is motivated not by patriotism or principle but by sheer greed. He is neither making a political statement nor protesting something he considers unjust or immoral. He simply wants to have more money for himself, no matter the social consequences.
And there are serious social consequences when the rich avoid their responsibility to support our government. If the Trumps of America do not pay their fair share, then who does? The rest of us. “We don’t pay taxes,” another Manhattan mogul, Leona Helmsley, once said. “Only the little people pay taxes.” Or, as Trump might have put it, only the “stupid” people pay.
Even if one does not believe in progressive taxation — the idea that people with more resources can afford to pay a larger percentage of their income in taxes — certainly we all can agree that the rich should not avoid taxes altogether. “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society,” Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in 1917. Through taxes, we support and sustain the institutions upon which we all depend. And despite the government-bashing rhetoric that has become so fashionable of late, we Americans get quite a lot for our money.
Some of our taxpayer-funded expenditures are well known and justly celebrated — the world’s greatest military, our national parks, NASA, the FBI and CIA, the Peace Corps, Social Security. But our federal taxes also pay for a host of other federal agencies that play an important, though, overlooked role in our everyday lives.
Our air, water, food, medicine and consumer products generally are clean and safe — thanks to taxpayer-supported public servants in the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. We can rest assured that our roads, seas and skies are safe thanks to the hard work done by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Coast Guard and the Federal Aviation Administration. We do not have to worry about bank failures draining our life savings, thanks to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
The list goes on and on — I have not even mentioned the emergency management roles that public agencies play after natural disasters, accidents and terrorist attacks, or the essential role of dedicated diplomats and military personnel who represent the United States across the globe.
Paying taxes should not be a partisan issue nor should it be a matter of class. It should never be something only the “little people” of the middle and working classes have to do. We can and should fight over what taxes to impose or which politicians we trust to enact them, but when our duly-elected representatives in government call on us to pay, we should pay.
Paying our fair share in taxes is about the West Point motto: “duty, honor, and country.” Those of us who feel a duty to serve our fellow citizens (in or out of uniform), those of us with a sense of honor to support our communities and those of us who love our country recoil when we see a freeloader who proudly avoids personal responsibility. Trump happily takes and takes and takes from our beloved country without feeling any sense of obligation to give back. This is not a man who deserves to be president.
Chris Myers Asch teaches history at Colby College in Waterville.