Related topics: taxes, prices, life insurance, car models, scholarships
Everyone knows there are federal taxes on tobacco and alcohol, but did you know the feds take a bite out of your afternoon candy bar?
Plenty of unexpected taxes raise the price of goods and services: so-called sin taxes, import duties, user fees and excise taxes on things as varied as gas guzzlers, firearms, communications services and air travel.
"Most of the hidden taxes pertain to products we buy rather than wages we earn," says Pete Sepp, executive vice president for the National Taxpayers Union, a watchdog group in Washington, D.C.
There's a tax on many of the items you think are free.
Here's just one example: The life insurance policy that your employer so generously gives you as a benefit is taxed if it is more than $50,000.
America first
To make it easier for domestic manufacturers to compete, the government may impose tariffs on imports ranging from brooms to bicycles, making their prices artificially high.
According to the U.S. International Trade Commission, here are some items whose prices swell with import taxes:
- Bicycles: 30%
- Certain infant formula: 30%
- Flashlights: 125%
- Girdles: 20%
- Brooms: 32%
- Cotton hammocks: 14%
- Table linens: 113%
- Peanut butter: 132%
- Office or school supplies: 53%
- Golf shoes: 35%
- Cameras: 20%
Besides tariffs, Congress uses subsidies to manipulate the price of goods and produce to help American producers.. These costs are sprinkled over many products, such as candy, breakfast cereal and other packaged food.
"Who pays for these subsidies? All of us do -- when we pay our taxes that are used to pay the subsidies to domestic producers and when we purchase a Milky Way as a midafternoon pick-me-up," says Andy Pike, a tax professor at American University's law school.
