Want a classic example of how government over-regulates?
A former legislative staffer from my office, Christian Schneider conveys the horror story of the bureaucratic nightmare he experienced upon trying to hire a babysitter to work 10 hours a week. Schneider writes about the fiasco in a column for the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.
It all started when he wanted to hire a UW-student as a babysitter for his children so his wife could return to work. Here is Schneider’s trip through babysitting bureaucracy hell:
1) He and his wife had to register and get both state and federal business identification numbers. As Schneider puts it, “we essentially had to become a corporation,” just to hire a babysitter.
2) They had to pay income taxes.
3) They paid Social Security taxes.
4) They paid unemployment taxes on their babysitter.
5) They paid back taxes, because Schneider admits it took some time to figure out the entire tedious process.
6) They had to register with the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development. Why? They set up quarterly unemployment insurance payments, even though if the babysitter left the job, she still would not collect unemployment compensation.
7) They had to file W-2 and W-3 forms with federal and state governments in order to report the babysitter’s income.
8) Schneider and his wife hired a professional tax preparer to figure everything out.
This bureaucratic mess, in addition to being cumbersome and unnecessary, serves to benefit only the government. The Schneider’s and their babysitter certainly failed to gain from this endeavor.
Government programs act as barriers to success and upward mobility. As Schneider points out in his piece, government needs to get out of the way of those who seek personal achievement.
You can read Schneider’s entire column
here.
