In praise of taxes

On Tax Day, a reminder that taxes are about way more than the federal budget

The IRS comes a knockin'.
(Image credit: (illustration Works/Corbis))

Once again, it's April 15: Tax Day. Most of us will grumble about the government raiding our pocketbooks, and some of us will defend taxes as investments in public goods and services. What we will have in common is thinking of taxes as revenue raisers that fill the government's coffers.

But that isn't the only purpose taxes can serve. Precisely because people tend to try to avoid paying them, taxes can be used to structure the economy and direct how money flows through it in different ways. Tax something and you'll get less of it, as the old observation goes.

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Jeff Spross

Jeff Spross was the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He was previously a reporter at ThinkProgress.