Tax Tyranny

Governments and those who love them have an excellent talent for using language to disguise the true nature of taxes. Somewhere along the line, it became possible to refer to taxes and tax increases as "investments" without being mocked, and to refer quite seriously to slight decreases in the rate of growth in government spending as "spending cuts." Another strategy in tax deception is to refer to tax breaks as a type of "spending." For example, note these phrases taken from a recent news story: