Your ROC: Calculating SMART Taxes

Numbers increasingly rule our lives. And that is, in the eye of the most forethinker, a good thing. Us older breeds remember when Social Security and phone numbers pretty well ruled the roost on these fronts though we needed lock combinations as we do today access codes and passwords -- those and knowing the number of the birth year needed to buy beer … that was pretty much as the we had to worry about.

Today, our lives depend on an ever broadening array of numbers, some we know, some we don’t. In places like the streets of San Francisco, the number 420 is as meaningful to certain groups as is 701 to others who use figures to stay alive and comfortable (with 701 being the stamped manufacturer’s designation on certain HIV/AIDS meds).

But few realize that the actual number of major significance that we give little notice to may well be our AGI. The Adjusted Gross Income is the calculated figure that has found a home on the literal bottom line of our tax returns. And whether we like to consider it or not, it is a rather profound set of digits. A great number of very personal financial and social determinations spin off of this sum, many having direct impacts on the ways and means (the value and expenditure patterns) of the money parts of our lives. Financial institutions openly (and sometimes secretly) use AGIs to classify and categorize us for various needs and purposes. Good ones, whatever that means, serve their business interests better; bad ones, serve us as individuals worse.

Our physical money may still say “In God We Trust,” but the greater truth is that in the U$ofA, “In AGI We Assess” is more about the end all and be all of the smart things of our financial survival. And the SMART technologies that are lining up to be even more pervasive sources of assessment of our value or worth, it is the 1s and 0s of their existence that matter.

The importance of making SMART assessments of people and activities is hardly lost on those who thrive by big and excessive riches. To them, it has always been the ROI that makes profits work and grow, for they need super great Returns on Investments to exploit our consumer tendencies.  Yet, from our point of contact with their spreadsheets, we fail to return the favor of valuing our own access to such quantities. We often pay little attention to the fact that we can profit as people -- contributing, culturally valuable members of society -- by virtue of our ROC, a new concept that I attach to the Return on Our Contribution. What we offer to others, what we give back in exchange for the infrastructure that we live amongst, what we count on as services and methods of engagements, etc. are critical for us making ends meet. Our ROC thus becomes as collectively valuable as the ROI is to those who live most about money and success.

SMART Taxes -- taxation based the interactive value of our income and wealth, yes, as designated in part by our AGI -- can be used proactively to change the nature of this game. Particularly so, one might think, for those routine items and activities that we purchase from the markets that themselves depend on the ways and means of commercialism. All the foods we buy, the utilities we need, the roads, buses, Ubers and Lyfts we count on, even the InterWeb machines of connectivity, cost public dollars and return advantages to those of us who make use of them. The amount we pay for such access, in the form of sales or user taxes, could easily be tied to the value of our ROC. It surely does not at this time reflect much of the costs associated with supporting the ROI of the investor classes.

Under such a model of interactive fairness, people with a lower AGI, translated into a better, higher ROC, would pay less for using the collective system than those who take more and give less. It might take some time to work out the formulas, but in a reasonable time, the ROC could easily become a measure for turning the AGI into a working figure of fairness and justice in taxation .... or put another way, in determining SMART Taxes!

If you invest your value in socially democratic activities (listen up, those who Feel The Bern!), your ROC would become more stable and beneficial to you and to the rest of us. If you do less than other numbers might suggest you should -- based on a greed factor linked to your AGI, perhaps (take note Mr. Trump!) -- your ROC could readily sink to the bottom of the tank.

The logic is simple. A SMART appreciation of the numbers behind the numbers of the AGI can be a good and healthy math for our future. Unfortunately, at this point, I see little awareness or discussion about this by those who ought to be aware of the importance of smart taxation factors. 

Which pretty much says to me that it is the opposite of SMART Taxes that will likely prevail for some time coming. April 15th awaits, BTW.