Tax Lover Starts Pro-Taxpaying Group
The Heartland Institute's Out of the Storm news blog reports:
Vanessa Williamson loves taxes.
Williamson is the founder of something you don’t (or at least we don’t) hear about every day: a pro-tax group – I Heart Taxes – and she describes the paying of taxes as a patriotic act.
The I Heart Taxes website features t-shirts and other merchandise. But Williamson – who is working on her PhD at Harvard’s Government and Social Policy Department – isn’t getting rich from the sale of pro-tax t-shirts and tote bags: she’s donating all I Heart Taxes proceeds to the U.S. Treasury.
OOTS News caught up with Williamson to find out more about her pro-tax movement.
IHT: IHeartTaxes.org is a website for the patriotic taxpayer. We cover the latest tax news, and we also sell “I Heart Taxes” merchandise — shirts, tote bags, mugs, and so on. 100% of IHT proceeds to support the U.S. Treasury, so your purchase goes to support the programs you care about.
OOTS News: When did you start the site?
IHT: I came up with the idea in the spring, but I don’t actually have any web or design skills, so I only launched it (very softly) in August. I think our first live posts went up for Social Security’s 75th anniversary. And I’ve been rolling it out slowly since then — an occasional new product, twice weekly blog updates. I have to fit it in between school and work and family stuff!
OOTS News: What inspired you to create the site?
IHT: Well, last April, around Tax Day, I noticed that a lot of my friends updated their gmail or facebook status to say that they had paid their taxes, and what programs they were proud to support. (Veterans tended to say that they were proud to support the troops in Iraq, environmentalists were happy to pay for the EPA…)
And I thought, it’s really too bad that no one is providing these folks with a platform. You hear so much anti-tax rhetoric, but at the same time, 60% of Americans think their own taxes are fair. That’s true of Democrats and Republicans alike.
So I thought, why not set up a site called “I Heart Taxes,” which would be a light-hearted way of talking about what is usually a pretty dull issue.
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