One of the most important political developments of the last century happened when the US Government decided to take your income taxes directly out of your paycheck, before you get it.  This has had the effect of hiding from the citizens just how much they’re really paying, and has helped keep the sheeple quiet about the massive levels of government spending.  Instead of April 15th being a dreadful day when you have to cut Uncle Sam a huge check, now many Americans look at the tax deadline as a payday!

Unfortunately, that may be coming to an end…

From CNBC via Yahoo:

This year, more Americans and businesses may be asking: Where’s my tax refund?

That’s because cash-strapped states such as North Carolina, Alabama and Hawaii have been forced to slow down issuing income tax refunds to individuals and businesses because of a lack of funds in their budget.

…

“States typically do this when they are tight and they don’t have a budget in place,” said Karla Dennis, CEO of Cohesive, a nationwide tax preparation firm. Things are dire at many states: forty-one states are expected to have mid-year budget gaps totaling $37.7 billion, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Uh oh…  Given the entitlement mentality of this country, and the dependence many people have on their tax refunds (I know several people/families who plan their April budgets around it), denying these people their tax refund, or significantly delaying it, could prove problematic for many Heads of State in the various states.  Indeed, this has been the case before, as noted in the article:

Refund payments were slow to be processed in North Carolina last year too, the only different now is that the department is keeping mum on when taxpayers might expect to receive their refunds. Last year, deadlines weren’t met.

“We ended up not being right and people got even more upset,” said Thomas Beam, a spokesperson at the North Carolina’s Department of Revenue.

This may have been somewhat acceptable in 2009, but this is 2010, an election year in the middle of an economic recession that has been long and rough on the taxpaying workforce.  Depriving cash strapped people of the money they have unknowingly overpaid to the tax coffers is a political disaster in the making.  Many of those refunds are mortgage and car payments, or they’re scheduled to cover expenses already paid for while people were still expecting their refunds in a timely manner.

No one cares about the state’s ability to pay a legislator’s secretary when their cell phone gets shut off because they planned on paying that bill with their refund.  No one cares about the fiscal solvency of a state’s Department of Natural Resources (or the local equivalent) on a Saturday morning when their kids are whining about not having cartoons because the satellite bill couldn’t get paid without that refund.

These are the sorts of things of which a politician’s nightmares are made.

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