I’m sure you are all aware that yesterday was perhaps the most dreaded day of the year. Before you panic, don’t worry, exams have not started yet. It was tax day. Normally, tax day falls on April 15, which also happens to be the day the Titanic sank (people will do anything to get out of paying taxes), this year it was delayed because that was Emancipation Day in Washington, giving procrastinators like me an extra weekend to do their taxes.

Now like any red- (or blue-) blooded American, I hate taxes almost as much as I hate terrorism or the New York Yankees. People joke that everyone becomes a conservative during tax season, but seriously, I worked hard for that money; I should get to keep it, right?

As an impoverished college student, I am not exactly the influential tax base on which our federal or state governments rely, so my personal feelings toward taxes are pretty insignificant. I am actually pleased this year because through some miraculous turn of events that most people call math, the government actually owes me money for a change.

Of course we need to pay taxes. I tend to like living in a country with a functioning government and infrastructure (though at times it is debatable as to whether we actually have these). If my taxes go to support national parks or the Environmental Protection Agency, I am OK with that. But they also pay for multiple wars and subsidize big business, with which I am less OK.

It is obvious that people have resisted taxes across time and place. Even the most die-hard government supporters would probably rather keep the money they pay in taxes. However, there are many groups that have resisted paying taxes not out of greed but out of principle. One group that famously took action against illegitimate taxation was early American colonists, particularly Bostonians, who instigated the Boston Tea Party in response to unfair taxes by the British.

Coming from a long line of tax haters, it is no wonder that American history is rife with examples of significant resistance to taxes because of moral issues — most prominently, issues with war. Henry David Thoreau said, “If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.” Quakers have frequently committed these kinds of acts of civil disobedience by refusing to support war through their taxes, choosing to keep their income below a taxable level or only paying the percentage of their taxes equal to non-military spending. During the Vietnam War, public figures and celebrities pledged not to pay all or part of their taxes in protest.

But you cannot decide what your tax dollars do — that is up to your representatives. But what if we could earmark our taxes and direct your money for use in dealing with hunger, public safety, the environment or the military?

I realize this is unlikely and it is completely unrealistic and foolish to allow people to choose how tax dollars are spent. I am not qualified to dictate the budget of our country, and neither are most people. Vital government services would go unfunded while others would suddenly have an overabundance of funding; the Internal Revenue Service would go broke, but Planned Parenthood would do just fine.

But what if you could earmark some small percentage of your tax dollars, even just 1 or 5 percent, toward an issue that is important to you? I think we would have a government that is more accountable to the people and thus more democratic. And hey, maybe then we wouldn’t hate tax day so much.

Rob Riker is a senior government and politics and history major. He can be reached at riker at umdbk dot com.