CARLTON FLETCHER: Enjoying the status that comes with being a thousandaire

“Baby you’re a rich man, baby you’re a rich man, baby you’re a rich man, too.”

— The Beatles

I have to admit I was feeling a little cocky when I read the news recently about our former president’s tax returns. It turns out I paid significantly more in taxes than he did … “significant” being a relative term.

Of course, the bar was set really low, seeing as how the former president paid $0 in taxes.

I also need to confess before going on that I am not now, nor have I ever been a billionaire, neither self-proclaimed nor real-life. (I will take a bow for recently moving out of the hundredaire category to become a thousandaire. Sorry if that sounded like bragging.)

I’ve read a number of different responses to the news of the president’s tax returns, but the one that sticks with me is one that I read from what I can only assume is a Trump loyalist who believes the man can do no wrong. This person said something to the effect that if the former president used the loopholes in the law to beat the system, good for him.

Apparently, a lot of people feel that way. And we wonder why we have a multitrillion-dollar deficit and climbing.

Sorry, but I don’t care who it is, gaming the system may be “legal,” but I find it shameful for the person who is the head of this country’s government to admit that he found ways around paying his fair share of taxes … and bragging about it.

(That being said, we should have expected nothing less from a man who bragged that he’s used seven bankruptcies to not only beat the system but also to cheat deserving companies out of money he owed them. Call that “smart business” all you want, I say it’s underhanded and a lousy example to set for a country creeping along under a stockpile of debt. And I’d say that no matter who was president.)

Contrast the former president’s attitude to a real billionaire like Warren Buffett, who has eagerly paid his fair share of taxes on his money earned and said publicly that the super wealthy needed to pay more taxes.

Some politicians in Georgia have pushed for radical changes to the state’s tax plan, some calling for the elimination of state income taxes and others pushing for a straight 10% tax paid on all goods at the time of purchase and, again no other state taxes. Now, they say, with a surplus in the billions, is the time for Georgia to make such a move.

And while I’m all for not paying state income taxes, I’d like to remind these would-be reformers that, yes, Georgia has amassed a remarkable general fund surplus during what are, right now, heady economic times. As the nation and, indeed, the world, moves to a virtual business model and companies look to revamp and modernize the way they do business, many of them see the infrastructure and transportation system — as well as lucrative tax incentives — in the Peach State as reasons enough to pull up stakes and head south.

Almost weekly, some new business relocation or expansion is announced in Georgia.

But just as quickly as the state’s economy has taken off, it could easily flounder. And those billions of surplus dollars could melt away as suddenly as a lost snowman on a blazing south Georgia summer day.

I’m certainly no economist (see the thousandaire comment above), but I do know enough to know that radical change should be discussed extensively and enacted carefully before any golden egg-laying geese are sacrificed. Surely the people of this state are aware of what can happen to a stockpile of money left in the care of politicians.

Besides, very few of us are “billionaire businessmen” who are all too eager to search out loopholes that keep us from paying our taxes. Guess we’ll leave that to former presidents and others willing to stoop so low.