Tax PR

Taxes have lousy public relations.

As taxpayers, the our most intimate experience we have is with the painful side of taxes, paying them.  With every pay day we get a reminder of how much we AREN'T getting in our checks because of taxes.  We have a very clear idea of what we think of taxes every year when we file our taxes or our extensions.

Tax Day (Photo credit: ChuckHolton)

The only time most people like reading or hearing the word tax is when it has the word free after it.

So this got me to thinking.  As a public relations and communications professional, I am often asked to shine a positive light on something that has a less than positive reputation with the public.  What would be the public relations steps for making taxes more acceptable to the general public?  This seemed like a worthy exercise.

My first thought is a standard of marketing: don't focus on the price, focus on the value.  What if with our tax bill we got an accounting of what our specific taxes went to purchase. I don't mean some meaningless pie chart that says that 12% of revenues were spent on boondoggles and whatnot.  I mean a very specific accounting of the things that my specific taxes likely paid for.  For instance, I imagine the tax bill would sting a bit less if I got a notice that told me that with my taxes, I paid for:

• a semester of hot lunches for a Kindergarten student in Kalamazoo, 
• paved 1/3 mile of the local highway outside of Kankakee, 
• provided medical care for 9 months to a senior citizen in Kansas City, 
• helped develop and support small businesses in Keelersville, 
• bought the fuel for two days of an Air Force jet stationed near Kannapolis and 
• helped to provide subsidies to a family vegetable farmer in Klamouth Falls. 

Of course, there is always the possibility that all of my taxes went toward a toilet seat for the Pentagon.  That would probably make me feel worse about my taxes.  

So then I started thinking about changing the language around taxation.  Like so many things that are viewed negatively by society, taxes have a vocabulary problem.  Rarely do we hear the word tax used in a positive light.  This is partially due to politics, but it is also because no one really LIKES paying taxes.  From Robin Hood to the Tea Party (1700's version or current version), taxes have been associated with the evil or despotic side of government.

What if the the IRS was responsible for collecting user fees and citizenship dues instead of taxes?  What if instead of taxes being withheld from our paycheck it was our monthly membership, like the health club?  I think that would only help if the fees and memberships were voluntary and we could discontinue them, like I hear some people do with health club memberships.

For me, one of the worst things about taxes is actually preparing them.  The US tax laws are a Gideon's knot of special rules, worksheets, penalties and deductions.  I speculated that if this were simplified it might make people feel more positive about taxes.  Then I read that 58% of taxpayers have their taxes prepared for them by someone else.  I suspect those people don't care how complicated the tax code is as long as their tax preparer is able to make things as painless as possible.

I was about to throw in the towel on this tax PR challenge when I hit on an idea.  A rather brilliant idea.  There is one aspect of taxes that is almost always viewed as positive.  There is one element in the collective taxing experience that people hope for and look forward to experiencing.  I am talking, of course, about tax refunds.

So, in my professional public relations opinion, if the IRS wants everyone to look more positively toward taxes, they should just collect 100% of our salaries as we earn them and every couple of weeks issue us a tax refund!

If you have some other public relations ideas on how to make taxes popular, please share them in the comment section below.

The views expressed above are not those of Blogger, Google, the Internal Revenue Service, 
the management and staff of Everything is Marketing, reasonable public relations practitioners 
or the author.