Letter: Not all union members pay taxes

A letter writer's contention that she pays taxes as do "all my fellow union members" is only partially correct.

Certainly members belonging to private sector unions do indeed pay taxes, but it's less clear that public sector union members do.

The source of all the income taxes and sales taxes that public sector union members believe they pay is the money provided to them by taxes collected from private sector corporations and their employees.

In what they maintain is paying taxes public sector employees simply return a portion of they've received from those taxpayers.

When thousands of public sector unions marched in Springfield in 2010, they held signs and chanted "Raise our taxes!"

What they really meant was "Raise YOUR taxes!" so that they could have jobs, get raises and be secure in their pensions.

Most public sector employees perform necessary services, do their jobs well, and make genuine contributions to the commonwealth.

Paying taxes, however, is not one of them.

Bob Foys

Inverness