How much would you be willing to pay for a chance of not ever having to pay federal taxes again? $1? $5? $20? $50? $100? More?
While I'm sure that there are several dozen laws on the books stating that this scenario can’t happen, I still wonder. What would people be willing to pay for this opportunity?
The scenario I have in mind is a lottery for private citizens in the US; businesses would not be eligible for this opportunity. If every year when those of us in the US file our taxes, what if there was a block on the form asking you if you wanted to enter a tax exempt lottery. If you were to have to pay taxes that year, your payment for this opportunity would go with your return, if you were to be getting money back you would have the option to pay directly or have the amount deducted from your return. This opportunity would be a flat fee (let’s say $100 to make the math nice and easy).
Any money raised with this lottery would go directly to public schools, divided to each state depending on the number of students and public schools for each state.
I’m going to use nice round numbers to make the math easy…
Let’s say, 10,000,000 people take this option. The revenue of just one year of this would be $1,000,000,000. Since I don’t know the numbers for students and schools, I’m going to again use easy math and just speculate based on an equal division of this money. We would be looking at (again, estimated because I don’t know the real numbers) $20 million going into our public schools.
What all could your state schools do with $20 million? Build a couple more schools to reduce class sizes? Update the electric/plumbing and other outdated systems so our students in those schools don’t have chunks of the ceiling falling onto their heads while sitting in class? Reinstate programs that were cut due to budget issues? Purchase enough text books so each child could have their own book for the class they are taking? Currently #1 & #2 are never able to bring home text books in order to study for most of their classes. There aren’t enough books, so what books there are have to stay in the classroom to be used by all classes.
In return the person who wins the lottery (only one winner per year) would never have to pay federal taxes again as long as they live. While many in the US would not go for this voluntary taxation, I think enough people would to make a difference for our schools.
What would you pay for this chance?