Pay to Play

In an effort to prevent raising taxes where I live, the town council passed a “pay to play” program at the high school. The program is not unique to our town, but it basically makes the student athletes pay for the costs that used to be covered by the school, such as uniforms and other related items.Last week I read an editorial in our local paper from a citizen who was outraged at this program, saying that it was “double taxation” since parents were already paying for education costs through their property taxes. And that the students should be entitled to a free public education, which in his mind includes sports.

I initiated a counter attack on this citizen’s philosophy, by writing an editorial citing reasons why pay to play is a good thing. First, you have to understand that in our town, and in most towns the parents with children going to public schools have it easy, because a good portion of the cost of public education is paid for by other residents without children in the public schools, through their property tax. These people, by the way, get no benefit from paying for other children’s education but are still expected to pay. Now if you eliminate the pay to play program, you cause the taxes on all property owners in the town to go up, not just those with children in the school system.

Secondly, to address the double taxation issue, I pointed out that we are taxed on things all the time through, what I like to call, a “cause and effect” tax. Just think about the federal taxes you paid (or are going to pay) this year. After you finished filling out the various forms, you went down to the post office slapped a 37¢ tax on the envelope and mailed it in. If this person’s logic is correct, then this situation is also double taxation, because you have to pay a postage tax in order to mail in the tax that you owe to the government. The reason why it is not double taxation, however, is because while the post office is a part of the federal government, your federal taxes don’t go to cover all of the post office’s costs to operate. This is where your stamp comes in, and it’s reasonable that it is paid for in this manner, isn’t it? If it wasn’t, the post office wouldn’t be able to operate without raising everyone’s taxes, and this wouldn’t be fair to those who choose e-mail or the telephone over “snail mail”.

As with the postage you put on your letters, the pay to play program can be thought of as an additional tax, but it is a necessary tax that was put in place in order to prevent everyone’s taxes from going up, including those who get no benefit from the tax. You don’t expect anyone else to pay for the birthday card you send to your Aunt Bertha, so you shouldn’t expect anyone else to pay for your little Billy’s soccer uniform.