It may seem an odd time of year to think about your taxes. But taking some steps before Dec. 31 can help minimize the amount you’ll owe or maximize your refund. The tax code has a few new items this year, including the well-publicized first-time homebuyer’s credit and a sales-tax credit for new-car buyers. There’s also time to use more traditional strategies for maximizing deductions and minimizing income to lower your tax bill next April.

Icall them “stealth taxes.“ These are direct taxes that are indirectly applied so that most people attribute them to something else. For example, one of the first taxes initiated by Congress this year was the federal tobacco tax increase. Taxes on cigarettes were increased to $1.01 per pack, up from 39 cents. When the price of cigarettes went up, most smokers blamed it on the tobacco companies, but they were simply passing on the costs to the consumer.

“The administration has inherited a system that can no longer pay for itself,“ according to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. He was talking about an expected shortfall in the federal highway trust fund—a problem the administration has actively been seeking to make worse. The trust fund gathers revenue principally from gasoline taxes. Like Virginia’s own gasoline tax, the federal tax of 18.4 cents per gallon is not pegged to inflation, so it has lost purchasing power over time. If it had kept pace with prices generally it now would stand between 25 and 30 cents per gallon.

America is at its best when it is a land of equal opportunity for all. The United States of America should be a level playing field for everyone to achieve to the best of his or her talent, hard work, and creativity, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, or gender—a meritocracy. Common sense—and indeed history—shows that people and countries prosper with the promotion of initiative, personal empowerment, and individual and family responsibility, rather than sapping dependence on a nanny government. Clearly, the best social program is a job.

Ever wish you could chat with the president? Here’s how a conversation might go . . . Glad to see you again. How about a beer from the first post-racialist president? Mr. President, today could we talk not about race or health care, but about taxes? Sure. They’re one of my strongest areas. And I’ve been very clear. I told the Democratic Convention a year ago that “in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.“

According to the Tax Foundation, in 1978 Virginians’ per-capita state and local tax burden was $553. When reckoned in 2008 dollars, that means that every man, woman, and child in Virginia back then forked out $1,964 to fund state and local government activities. By 2008 that tax burden had risen to $3,281—a whopping 67 percent higher, in real terms, than 30 years earlier.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said yesterday that he could not rule out higher taxes to help tame an exploding budget deficit. Geithner spoke as his chief economic adviser, National Economic Council Director Larry Summers, spoke in the same vein, saying he would not dismiss raising taxes on middle-class Americans as part of a health-care overhaul.

The Rev. Mat Brown, pastor of Branch’s Baptist Church in Richmond, raises an interesting question about the city’s new stormwater runoff fee. It looks a lot like a tax—and churches are supposed to be exempt from taxation. The stormwater runoff fee assesses property owners based on the amount of impervious surface (such as parking lot square footage) their property contains. The fee goes to maintaining and improving the city’s stormwater management system, which the city is obliged to do because of state and federal mandates—not to mention sound environmental stewardship.

The two candidates for governor clashed over transportation funding yesterday in the first debate of the general-election campaign. Democrat R. Creigh Deeds said Republican Bob McDonnell’s transportation plan, announced this week, would take $5.4 billion out of education funding over the next 10 years. McDonnell said Deeds has no transportation plan.

The Rev. Mat Brown worries that Richmond has lost sight of one of Virginia’s commandments: Thou shalt not tax churches. He’s trying to make sense of the city’s new stormwater utility fee and questioning why churches should have to pay it, just as owners of homes and business properties do. “Churches are different. We are always treated differently,“ said Brown, pastor of Branch’s Baptist Church in South Richmond. “The precedent is that the government sees that what we do is a worthy thing.“

Who are these crazy people claiming the $787 billion stimulus bill hasn’t worked? It already achieved its main objective: a bigger federal government for you and me. And we’ve only just begun. The Obama 10-Year Plan (also called the federal budget), the Obama Healthy Government Initiative (usually referred to as health care reform in the ministries of propaganda formerly known as newsrooms), and the Heroic Obama Save the Planet Now Scheme (Cap’n Trade) could one day combine to make government in America nearly as large as the private economy.

Remember Joe the Plumber? During the fall presidential campaign conservatives like Joe Wurzelbacher warned that Barack Obama would raise taxes on average Americans. “Your new tax plan’s going to tax me more, isn’t it?“ Wurzelbacher asked Obama directly. Obama and his liberal defenders vociferously insisted he wouldn’t raise taxes on anybody but a handful of rich folks. Many tore into Wurzelbacher for being a shill and a stooge and a complete idiot, too.

For more than a century Congress has recognized the importance of keeping American companies competitive in the global marketplace, understanding that their success and growth abroad increases prosperity and creates jobs here at home. To level the playing field, Congress enacted a series of complex tax rules designed to prevent double taxation and allow American companies to compete on an equal footing with their foreign competitors.

Reports about the death of conservatism in America may be greatly exaggerated, at least according to a poll released by Gallup last week that—big surprise—didn’t generate a lot of interest in the mainstream media. Gallup, perhaps the most respected and unbiased polling organization in the country, found that self-identified conservatives outnumber liberals by a 2-1 margin. Forty percent of Americans describe themselves as conservative, compared with 21 percent who say they are liberal. Another 35 percent label themselves as moderate.

Taxes are created from several sources, but the biggest source is from corporate and personal income taxes. (I will omit the discussion of sales taxes, property taxes, business taxes, and other taxes that specifically benefit state and local governments. I want to focus on our federal deficits with regard to their primary sources of revenue.)