Your tax dollars at work

You may have seen the breakdown on this page Saturday of how your federal tax dollars are spent. It was a useful guide so far as it went, explaining the $24,106 per household allocated in the U.S. budget. It left unitemized, however, $451 of that amount used for miscellaneous spending. As a public service, we describe our assumptions about those expenditures throughout today's column.

For instance, did you know 48 cents of everyone's taxes pay for air filtration odor-eaters installed in airports, as a result of the security measures that make us all take our shoes off before boarding planes?

Feeling emancipated today?

Normally, we would be in a panic today once checking the calendar, noticing it's April 16, and realizing we forgot to move the clocks ahead. Then Mrs. Morning File would bop us on the head and advise us the time change was a different matter, but someone will have hell to pay if he didn't do his manly duty and fill out the tax forms.

I'm hoping that happens today, so I can spring on her something I've been waiting to say our entire marriage: "I don't have to do anything, it's Emancipation Day!"

OK, so it's not my Emancipation Day, but it's the excuse we've been handed to take an extra day (two, actually, since April 15 fell on a Sunday) to file taxes. Washington, D.C., municipal officials declared April 16 an annual holiday in 2005, remembering the date in 1862 when Abraham Lincoln signed legislation freeing 3,100 slaves within the District of Columbia.

Slaveholders in the nation's capital were lucky -- they received about $300 per slave as compensation from the government. When Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation abolishing slavery elsewhere nine months later, no payments were offered to anyone who thought they owned another person. (Everyone all at once: "Awwwww.")

The end of U.S. slavery came 28 years after the British Empire freed its slaves, and residents of the Bahamas and other former colonies hold their own Emancipation Day holidays on other dates to celebrate.

Another miscellaneous cost

The FBI spends $1.12 per household to enforce the anti-piracy seals that turn up on the front of every video and DVD. A SWAT team of 39 agents roams the country randomly showing up at homes, forcing entry and arresting those illegally copying the entertainment materials, as well as anyone trying to watch any post-1990 movie starring one of the original "Saturday Night Live" cast members.

Rebels with a cause

One of Mahatma Gandhi's favorite sayings (no, not "Hey, who ate the last doughnut?") was: "Withholding payment of taxes is one of the quickest methods of overthrowing a government."

But here in the good old U.S. of A., the taxpaying revolution is kind of stalled, judging from a Christian Science Monitor article last year. It reported that an estimated 10,000 Americans were withholding taxes in protest of the war in Iraq, a move that appears to have been unsuccessful. Since then, as you recall, President Bush pushed for higher troop levels. (Why'd all you tax protesters have to get him riled up like that for?)

An Internal Revenue Service spokesman stressed that federal courts have rejected protesters' right to withhold taxes, regardless of the motive. Prosecutions are rare, however. An attorney who represents such defendants, Peter Goldberger, says the IRS treats tax resisters as it does millions of other Americans who are behind on their taxes. Fines and interest accumulate, but legal action is usually reserved for fraudulent or egregious cases.

"The IRS would never admit this, but I've found that they go easier on people with sincere beliefs [who] are open about those beliefs," Mr. Goldberger said. "If you are open and honest, you will find it far easier than if you are sneaky."

More miscellany

The federal budget includes 31 cents per household for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Institute of Ever More Rigorous Health Requirements, where giggling, out-of-shape researchers spend time revising prior exercise and nutrition guidelines to ensure the guilt of most Americans.

From the AP
• Man Buys Smoker, Finds Human Leg Inside • Coach Stops Runaway Horse by Biting Ear • Man Allegedly Tries to Use 'Blurry' $100 • Police Break Up Brawl at Chuck E. Cheese • Suggestive Card Ruffles Farmer's Feathers • Nerds to Auction Themselves to Women • Toilet to Tap? San Jose Probes Plan • Seattle to Allow Pygmy Goats As Pets • Yankees Rookies Dress Up in Oz Costumes

Who are you 2 percent?

Since 1947 the Gallup Poll has been measuring Americans' attitudes toward their federal income taxes. Here's how the 1,008 adults surveyed this month rated the payments, at least among those with an opinion:

Too high: 53 percent

About right: 41 percent

Too low: 2 percent

The dissatisfaction level was up moderately since last year. In the history of the survey, the high point of discontent was 1969, when 69 percent called taxes too high. Back in 1949, only 43 percent said taxes were too high, while 53 percent said they were about right.

People enjoy pointing fingers at others whom they believe get away with special tax treatment. This year 71 percent said corporations pay too little, and 66 percent said upper-income people are undertaxed. Seventeen percent said lower-income people pay too little.

One last phony expenditure

The government spends 60 cents per household to purchase old sedans and abandon them on the side of interstate highways, giving motorists a momentary false impression that more police vehicles are monitoring their speed than is actually the case.