If You Check This Box On Your Tax Return, You Are Wasting Money

With the federal government continuing to pile up enormous annual deficits, the incentives to reduce spending—any spending – get even more urgent.

And as most of the political class, and the voters who enable it, are keen to avoid the major areas of budget madness (entitlements, for those playing at home), Sen. Rand Paul offers an assortment of items he calls wasteful, and others that show the high cost of spending in general (like interest payments on all that debt).

Among the items in Paul’s “Festivus Report 2023” are gems like this:

Every year, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) reroutes incoming tax payments to a fund set aside for U.S. presidential campaigns. The accountis funded by a $3 IRS tax return check box. Since 2008, no major political party’s candidate for president has accepted the funds. As of November 1, 2023: $400.6 million sat unused in the Presidential Election Campaign Fund Account.

Why do we provide unused and unnecessary welfare for politicians and their presidential campaigns? It’s time to scrap the wasteful Presidential Election Campaign check-off program.

Fair enough. But remember: this is money people voluntarily designated on their tax returns. One would expect that if the fund is dissolved, the money would return to its source…the Treasury Department’s “general fund.”

Where the money goes from there is anyone’s guess. But barring specific congressional direction on where the money goes, it’s likely to end up spent on something else.

Paul also notes the billions in improper federal payments made during the last year:

…the Biden Administration sent out a whopping $236 billion in inaccurate checks, otherwise known as “improper payments.” Federal law defines the term as payments made by the government to the wrong person, in the wrong amount, or for the wrong reason.

Medicaid tops the list of improper payments made in 2023 (more than $50 billion). 

The Government Accountability Office noted that overpayments are a “long-standing issue for the federal government. Over the last 20 years, it has made almost $2.4 trillion in payment errors, according to reported estimates.”

Like federal overspending itself, the erroneous checks are a bipartisan affair that keeps rolling, despite the reports, the testimony, and the promises to reform.

But it’s all very on-brand for our resident political class.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.