The Burden of Henry Suburban

How high can taxes go? One tax expert is sure they can't go much higher Without killing off the taxpayer. In the current Saturday Evening Post, Roswell Magill, onetime Under Secretary of the Treasury and now president of the nonprofit Tax Foundation, describes in painfully homely terms the tax burden already carried by "Henry Suburban," an average income earner who commutes to work. Henry knows all about his heavy income tax and social security. But his life is also plagued by hidden taxes he rarely thinks about.

"Henry," writes Magill, "is aroused in the morning by his alarm clock (price $6, plus $1.32 tax) . . . He walks across the floor of his $8,000 house (annual property tax $240) and switches on the electricity (3 1/2-c- tax on each dollar of his monthly bill) which lights the bulb (price 20-c-, plus 2-c- tax)." Hardly a thing Henry touches is not taxed: cuff links (price $3.50, plus 77-c- tax), toaster (price $20.50, plus $1.74 tax), refrigerator (price $300, tax $25.52), cigarette (price per pack 10-c-, plus 7-c- federal tax, plus 4-c- state tax). Even Henry's wife whom he kisses goodbye cost Henry a $2 marriage license--to say nothing of the tax on the lipstick he wipes off.

"Yet, the biggest part of Henry's tax story is still to be told," says Magill. "Take Henry's toast . . .

"The farmer had to pay taxes on his land and machinery, and he also paid most of the taxes Henry pays . . . The miller, too, had taxes to pay . . . Transporting the flour included taxes--railroad taxes, taxes on gasoline and oil. The baker . . . paid taxes on his property, unemployment-compensation and social-security taxes . . . The retailer's mark-up included still more taxes . . ." One way or another, all these items wound up in Henry's toast.

What does it come to? Several economists recently estimated that if Henry's family is in the $3,500-a-year class, Henry coughs up in the form of state and federal taxes, seen and unseen, about $908 a year, or a little over one-fourth of what he makes. In other words, for 13 1/2 weeks of the year, every morning when the alarm clock rings, Henry sighs, gets up, and goes to work just to earn enough money to pay his taxes.

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