Regardless of what issue is floating around the public sphere, taxes are always a reliable dividing point. If anyone mentions taxes, at least half of the country will have an opinion on it. This makes taxes, without a doubt, the most oversimplified aspect of politics we all discuss today.

This is because of the simple, powerful reaction taxes get from voters. However, the issue of raising and lowering taxes is a lot more complicated than anyone makes it out to be, especially mainstream conservatives.

The only simple truth I can say about taxes with total confidence is that nobody likes them. Both parties can probably agree that no one really enjoys giving his or her earned money to the government for whatever its hidden plans are.

But as much as people hate taxes, especially when we’re getting taxed more after college, taxes are also a part of living in a civilized society that uses the money to keep functioning. Conservatives and liberals would both love lower taxes, but sometimes more tax revenue is a sad necessity. So the question doesn’t become how we can lower taxes and keep them low, it’s how we can lower taxes when we can and raise taxes when we need to in a way we can all agree on.

That, unfortunately, is where all the simplicity ends on the tax topic. But there are some points that I think we can start trying to agree on.

Taxes should be lower on people who we know will spend most of their income and bring that money back into the economy, such as the middle and working class. This includes those out of work, whether it’s those still studying in school or those who’ve retired with higher medical costs, as they need all the money they can manage.

Business owners actively investing their money in their own work, or other businesses that are employing new people, should be rewarded with lower rates. People who donate greater shares of their income to charity should get bigger tax breaks for their compassion.

On the other side, taxes should be higher on people hiding large savings in off-shore accounts just to avoid taxation. Business owners who have the profits to triple their own salaries without increasing their workers’ wages can afford higher taxes without consequence. The same concept applies for already profitable businesses sending jobs overseas and keeping those jobs away from people in the U.S.

This also goes for citizens who would otherwise be investing more in political lobbying, super PACs and other forms of legalized bribery instead of in businesses around them. Higher taxes should also be applied for people who use tax loopholes that they lobbied into the system.

That tax money should go toward rebuilding roads, bridges and other infrastructure to give the private sector better working conditions. Good early education to citizens will also help keep citizens out of poverty, get more high-paying jobs and contribute more taxes in the long run. Taxes should go toward a social safety trampoline that can catch people falling into poverty and help propel them back up to a better place in life.

This is all definitely still scratching the surface of the tax issue, but it should at least give conservatives something to keep in mind: Just because people have a simple, powerful dislike of taxes doesn’t mean they should take that and apply it to their actual policy on them.

Low taxes are a great thing to work toward as a party, but it isn’t as simple as lowering as many taxes as possible to make everything better. Like most other issues, it’s full of gray as opposed to being black and white.

Max Antonucci is a junior newspaper and online journalism major. His column appears weekly. You can find him on Twitter @DigitalMaxToday or email him at meantonu@syr.edu.

Published on April 7, 2014 at 1:00 am