Remember Tax Day on Election Day

April 15, Tax Day, is all about paying.

This year, perhaps even more than others, it needs also to be about paying attention.

To be sure, most people thinking about taxes today are probably frantically trying to figure out how they're going to get everything done and filed by midnight. They may also be trying to figure out how they're going to come up with the cash they owe.

For all the late filers, happily, the IRS is showing its kinder, gentler side with some practical advice. Even if you can't cut a check for your full tax bill today, the IRS emphasizes, file. At least then, agents can work with you to create a fair, manageable system for paying your bill.

But after you've filed, and after you've paid, it's time to reflect on what you're paying for. Across the suburbs and around the country today, angry citizens are planning a visible protest to tell the government they've had it with high taxes. The symbol of their outrage is the tea bag - harking back to the Boston Tea Party.

Hopefully, today's "tea parties" will indeed encourage citizens to seriously reflect on how much they pay in taxes and what they pay for - and more importantly, how those taxes are established. Because, for all the outrage we may feel about our tax burden, there is a major difference between our own circumstances in 2009 and those that led revolutionaries to toss bales of tea into Boston Harbor in 1773. The issue back then wasn't just taxation; it was taxation without representation. However removed we may feel from our government, the income taxes we pay weren't established by a colonial power an ocean away. They were established by our own democratically elected representatives.

It's at least mildly ironic that today's tax protest follows by barely more than a week an election in which fewer than one in five eligible citizens considered it important enough to vote. The next elections in 2010 will feature positions that have an even more direct say in the income tax burden of Illinoisans. If you're truly concerned about taxes, it's going to be much more important that you let representatives know you will be at the polls next year than that you got you picture taken among a group of angry protesters.

In a story in Sunday's Daily Herald, Politics and Projects Editor Joseph Ryan took note of the anti-tax sentiment that seemed to run through last week's elections and reflected on how that sentiment might play out a year from now when lawmakers who now are considering a 50 percent increase in the state income tax stand for election. The critical phrase there is "a year from now." Will voters who are shaking tea bags in the air in April 2009 care enough in 2010 to call their elected representatives to account at the polls? And just as important, will the people whose interests and programs are served by the taxes we pay turn out to make their voices heard in the one way that really counts, the ballot box?

Regardless of whether you're late filing or just angry about what you've already paid, that's an important point to remember on Tax Day.