Taxed enough already?

To the Editor;
I hate paying taxes — even more than shoveling snow! We keep hearing how much we have to pay in taxes — and that we deserve tax relief. So, my wife and I decided to find out just how much we do pay in taxes. We just prepared our annual federal and state tax returns and this time, we did something we’ve never done before. We wanted to see how much of a bite all those taxes really did take out of our income. Being retired, a good share of our income comes from Social Security. But, like many other retired people, I work part time to make some extra money to cover the gap. Since I work, we pay federal and state taxes on most of our Social Security income as well as my regular income.
When we added it all up, we were surprised at the results. Federal taxes came to about 6 percent of our total income. Social Security payments added another 3 percent. So instead of the 35 percent rate that we usually hear, it turns out that our federal payments only came to 9 percent of our income. Our state income taxes came to less than 1 percent of our income. Local property taxes, for our home and our 4-year-old car, combined to equal just under another 4 percent of our income
Altogether, we paid about 14 percent of our income in federal, state, and local income and property taxes. Since we keep hearing that we are taxed way too much, we expected it to be a lot more. (Of course, when we throw in sales taxes (to the state), and gasoline taxes (to the state and to the Feds), we paid even more.) But as a person working for a living, whether retired or still working, my beef with state taxes is definitely not income taxes. Lowering state income taxes for working people will not help. At the state level we won’t benefit by income tax relief, we need property tax relief.
Even though my wife and I are retired, and grateful recipients of Medicare, we still pay a lot for health care coverage. We pay premiums for Medicare and for Medicare Part D (drugs), and, since Medicare doesn’t cover everything, we also pay for a private supplemental plan. Altogether these health insurance payments came to over 11 percent of our income. Almost as much as we paid in taxes. And we are on Medicare! What about the folks who aren’t yet on Medicare? How do they get health care coverage? Or can they even afford it? Something doesn’t add up here either.
Something is wrong with the story that we are all hearing. We need to dig deeper. A good place to start may be to consider what we get for all those federal, state and local tax dollars we pay.
P.S. If you share my bafflement, contact me any time. Let’s talk.
Chris Maas
Dover-Foxcroft