As the April 15 tax filing deadline looms, I ask: Do government employees pay taxes? My answer: No. As a rule, their paychecks come from money taken from private sector individuals and organizations through taxation. Thus, when a public servant "pays" taxes, they are merely passing along taxes extracted from private employees, the private sector, in the first place.

Thus, I chuckled the other day when I saw a car sporting some kind of “I’m a public employee union member” bumper sticker and another that said, “I pay more income taxes than Enron.” (Never mind that businesses don’t pay taxes, they merely collect money from customers, reduce dividends to shareholders or lower employee benefits to pay that cost.) The next time you hear a public servant gripe about paying taxes, take it upon yourself to remind them who really pays taxes -- and who does not.