Lump Sum Taxes

Finance, a la Shmoop. [title page] What's the difference between federal

and state taxes? All right, well, when the U.S. came together a quarter of a

millennium ago, it was the United States. See, right there in the title you get a [founding fathers pictured]

sense of the tension. We started out as just states. These things. Then, we came together [individual states on map]

and created a central government that kind of sort of had control over each of [government tries to control states]

the states, and well, you can imagine that not everyone agreed about every rule.

Some states wanted murder to be an offense punishable by death, while other [protesters picket]

states wanted it to be, you know, legal. Well, okay maybe not legal, but they

had different ideas about how you should deal with murderers... i.e., not all of them [person pushed into lion pit]

should be thrown into the lion pit. Anyway, this was all well and good when it just

involved local laws and customs. Local customs dictated local laws, and then

local taxes could be allocated accordingly. So they could pay for things [local laws and taxes diagram]

like a bouncy house for the mayor. But what happened when there was a threat of [mayor in bounce house]

military invasion? Well, what if Georgia wanted to fight

them commies, but North Carolina didn't? Yeah, that didn't work out so well. So [states argue over military]

for some things, there has to be a federal law that supersedes state law

and federal taxes that support those laws, like military spending. If only those [federal laws and taxes diagram]

pacifists in Maryland didn't want to spend money on guns, well, then what would

the rest of the country do? Yep, let Maryland start speaking Russian or [Maryland hippies hang out]

Chinese as the preferred language while the rest of the nation just watched [Maryland conquered]

while sipping their tea? Or in the United States' case, you know, eating doughnuts? Yeah. [Americans eat doughnuts]

So, military spending protects the entire country, and those expenses come out of [military budget chart]

federal taxes. National highways? Federal. Border Patrol? Federal. Space travel? [federal and local laws/taxes demonstrated]

Federal. Schools? State. Libraries? State. Little country roads? State... local.

You know... Or even smaller in the form of county

taxes as we get littler and littler... yeah. So federal taxes pay for all the big

stuff--the things that we share as unified Americans no matter what state

we live in, while state taxes pay for stuff particular interest to our little

local state, wherever it is. You know, like DC taxes aren't going to be used to

build a fire department in Minnesota. Stuff like that. [fire department in Minnesota]

Besides, Washington has their, you know, own fires to put out. [newscaster speaks]