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Show $12,000,000,000 Tax Item What is the largest item in the American budget? Is it food, rent, clothing, or light and power? If you guess any of these, you're entirely wrong. The largest item is taxes! Our annual tax lead federal, state and local Is now in the neighborhood of $12,000,000,000. By contrast, the annual food biU Is $11,500,000,000 the annual rent bill $10,000,000,000 the annual clothing bill, $6,000,000,000 the annual light and power bill, $2,000,000,000. Government, in other words, takes, directly and indirectly, more of our income than is taken by the grccer and butcher mere than is taken by the landlord twice as much as we pay the clothing cloth-ing store and! six times as much as we pay the electric and gas company! But, you say, 'I'm a man of average av-erage means. I pay little of this tax load big business carries the principal burden." If you th nk that, reflect on these figures: If the entire net income in-come of all the corporations in this country in 1933 last year for which official figures are available had been confiscated for tax purposes, it would have paid Just about one-quarter of the total tax bill, leaving three-quarters to be made up from other sources! The facts speak for themselves. Taxation is the greatest problem the people face and it is constantly constant-ly becoming graver. |