How Uncle Fred Plans to Keep YOUR Money

 Krayton Kerns
8.16.06

Last week I expressed my concern about my Uncle Fred at the Montana Department of Revenue and his growing six-hundred million dollar surplus.  The State Republican Party has launched an aggressive plan to return those excess tax revenues back to their rightful owners.  If we fail, it is because we taxpayers don’t fully comprehend the size of the surplus, and Uncle Fred knows this. 

If you need proof, conduct this experiment:

1)      Put fifty jellybeans in an empty Pepsi bottle.

2)      Fill the bed of your pickup with jellybeans.

3)      Drive up to any stranger on the street.  (Be cautious, the public is wary of strangers driving pickups full of jellybeans.)

4)      Stop and ask them to guess how many jellybeans are in the bottle.  Their guess will be very close.

5)      Now ask them to guess how many jellybeans are in the pickup bed.  They will miss it by hundreds of thousands.

Here is the point:  The human brain can easily visualize quantities less than one thousand.  But, as we are asked to judge quantities far beyond that level our answers are no more accurate than that from a well trained Labrador. So, take the pencil from your Lab and let’s divide the surplus into an amount we can understand.

 $600,000,000.00 of excess tax revenues divided by 935,000 citizens means that each Montanan with a pulse has overpaid $641 to Uncle Fred.  When you consider that five-year-olds too light to clutch a tractor don’t pay taxes, it is the wage-earning and property tax payer who has overpaid the state thousands of dollars.  (I can understand that number!)  If we leave that money in the state treasury it will be spent.  Please send me to Helena so I can get your money back!