“So the IRS is becoming a spending agency.”

I just filed my tax returns, so this story is a kick-in-the-gut reminder of our entitlement society, where a shrinking number of us pay the freight and a growing number of Americans happily jump aboard the entitlement train. The first quote below is from Will McBride of the Tax Foundation.

Close to a hundred billion in checks sent out by the IRS (go) to folks who have no tax liability,” McBride said. “So the IRS is becoming a spending agency.”

Arthur Brooks, head of the American Enterprise Institute, put it this way: “Half of the people who don’t pay anything in federal income taxes — about half of them pay less than zero.”

But Brooks says the system is tilted even more toward those in the middle class and below because they also get services from the federal government. As a result the per capita value of government spending exceeds what those individuals pay in federal taxes.

“Right now about 70 percent of Americans take more out of the tax system than they put into it, according to the Tax Foundation,” Brooks said.”