Taxes are low, but don't expect that to last long

I'm guessing not many of you want to pay more in taxes, just as not many of you would volunteer for unneeded dental surgery or to use your head as a doorstop.

At the same time, I'm guessing not many of you think your current tax burden is too light. Taxes are to an adult what baths are to a child. No matter how little effort is involved, you would prefer to avoid it all together.

And so you may have had mixed reactions to an Associated Press story last week that said federal taxes this year are the lowest since 1950.

The anti-tax fervor that gripped much of this country recently has been a bit hard to define. Part of it seems based on worries the government will repeat the mistakes it made at the start of the Great Depression, when a combination of protectionism and higher taxes sent the economy over a cliff.

Part of it seems directed at the bills the nation is pushing onto future generations. Massive bailouts and stimulus packages have racked up unpaid debts that will force difficult choices on our children — or perhaps even on ourselves not too far into the future.

But the part directed against the current level of taxes is a bit harder to understand. Sure, the federal tax structure is hopelessly complicated and inefficient, but there have been worse times to be a U.S. taxpayer.

As the AP report noted, a married couple earning a combined $50,000, with two children, including one in college, would owe no federal taxes this year. In fact, they would get a check for $734.

If the same couple earned $1 million and had large investments, their tax burden would be $6,740 less this year than last.

In 1950, adjusting for inflation, a couple earning the equivalent of $50,000 would pay a 20 percent marginal rate. Those earning $1 million would pay 90 percent.

And if you live along the Wasatch Front, as I've noted a few times before — always to howls of protest but never to any that are backed by facts to the contrary — your property taxes today are far less as a percentage of your income than they would have been in the mid-1960s. That was shown by a Utah Foundation analysis.

In fact, it's a relatively great time to be a taxpayer in Utah. But then, of course, the amount of taxes we pay really isn't the nation's big problem at the moment.

Which leads me to the second news story that caught my attention this week. It had to do with the nation's credit card debt. The Federal Reserve reported last week that credit card debt increased in December for the first time since 2008.