Has anyone who reads or writes this blog offered to pay more taxe? Do we all not deduct everything we can legally deduct and take advantage of every tax saving opportunity we can? Of course we do. But when a U.S. senator does exactly the same, we go all ape shit calling him a miserable corrupt tax dodger. Wanna collect proper taxes for mooring a boat, have every state agree to harmonize their taxes. Since this will never happen why not look at the states as the source for unevan taxation. Here's an example. Florida has no state income tax. California state income tax ranges from 1% to 10.3%. Is this fair?

"Has anyone who reads or writes this blog offered to pay more taxe?"

Of course not. I'm for lower taxes and people taking every break they can get...unlike John Kerry. It's the hypocrisy that's the problem. That's the point.

Always a big picture kind of guy, Jeff Jacoby doesn't call Kerry a hypocrite or celebrate his being browbeaten into paying the taxes he would have been liable for if the boat were registered in MA.

Jacoby notes that Kerry had acted in his rational self-interest and quotes some of of Justice Learned Hand's opinions in support of people doing what they can to minimize their tax liability. He sees the affair as a teachable moment that was missed, a lost opportunity.

...What was the point of browbeating Kerry into paying higher taxes? Or rubbing his nose in his own history of laments about “tax-cuts-for-the-rich’’ and how “abusing offshore tax loopholes is wrong’’? It would have been far better to seize the moment to make Kerry see that by arranging to enjoy his yacht without paying the Bay State’s onerous taxes, he was acting not badly or selfishly, but rationally. Maybe Kerry could finally have absorbed the fundamental economic reality that human beings respond to incentives — and when taxes are too high, taxpayers and their money have an incentive to go elsewhere. Even fabulously rich taxpayers like Kerry and his wife.

Enticing as it can be to think otherwise, reality isn’t optional. Tax something less, and you get more of it; tax something more and you get less of it. People will always find ways to minimize their tax bill, and it is absurd to expect anything else.

This isn’t just about yachts and boatyards. If Congress allows the Bush-era tax cuts to expire at the end of 2010, tens of millions of Americans will change their economic behavior to avoid giving up more of their income to the government. Some will respond by working fewer hours, others by not expanding their business, or by looking for ways to shelter their income, or by moving to someplace where taxes aren’t so high. Few of us are zillionaires with teak-paneled yachts, but most of us become less productive when productive work is taxed more steeply.