To follow up on Tim's post below: One complaint conservatives often make about American tax rates is that the corporate rate is so high (35 percent) that it prevents investment and destroys jobs. Liberals counter that 35 percent may be the nominal rate, but once corporations are done exploiting all the loopholes, they don't pay anything near that. In fact, many don't pay anything at all. Let's take General Electric -- they made $10.3 billion in profits in 2009, and how much did they pay in taxes? Nothing. Or rather, you paid them -- they got a $1.1 billion rebate from the IRS.

Though I ultimately disagree with her conservative takeaway, I actually found myself agreeing with much of Katrina Trinko's argument that sin taxes -- taxes on everything from cigarettes to soda -- are politically cowardly and cheap:

That's because during this recession, politicians are increasingly resorting to sin taxes to help close budget gaps. Aware that Americans, facing high unemployment and underemployment, won't rush to support (or re-elect) those who raise income taxes, politicians are devising less obvious ways to boost revenue. Raising fees on government services is one such way; increasing or instituting sin taxes is another.

As you probably know, California suffers under an absurdly dysfunctional political system, particularly when it comes to the budget. Because of the diabolical Proposition 13 passed in 1978, raising taxes requires a two-thirds supermajority of both houses of the legislature. A two-thirds supermajority is also required to pass every budget. And of course, no one wants their services cut, which means the state is perpetually beset by deficits and budget crises.

Around this time every year, people start making all kinds of ideologically motivated claims about taxes. So I thought it might be worthwhile to diffuse a few myths. Let's get right to it:

We're taxed to death! Well, no. In fact, when you look at American tax rates compared to those of other countries, we have extremely low taxes. This graph, using data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, shows that among industrialized countries, we rank near the bottom in taxes paid. It's a little hard to see, but the U.S. is over there on the right, with only the Japanese, Turkish, and Mexicans paying less in taxes than us:

A few weeks ago, I wrote about New York Gov. David Paterson's efforts to add a penny-per-ounce tax on sugared beverages in order to help close a Department of Health budget gap and to curb obesity. That effort faces an uphill battle among residents, according to local polls. It also was not a part of the budget put forward by Senate Democrats last month.

My item about how Congress accidentally repealed the estate tax in 2010 (and automatically imposed an extremely onerous version of the controversial levy in 2011) has gotten responses from Tim Carney and Jeff Jacoby; the latter of whom even has the temerity to call me a "class warrior" because of my support for the estate tax, a description with which our commenters will no doubt disagree.