You may celebrate Tax Day next week because you will finally be finished (you hope) with your tax returns. You may even cheer the good news that you will be receiving a refund. But April 15 is the day when nearly every American becomes a bit a more conservative, both because of the burden of preparing tax returns and the drain that taxes impose on family wealth.

For a minority of Americans, however, Tax Day is worth celebrating because taxes — either the dollars you pay or the complexity of complying with the law (or both) — are good news for them. I call them tax bandits, and they fit into four categories: the tax spenders, the tax receivers, the tax parasites and the tax shelters.

Politicians and bureaucrats are the tax spenders. High taxes give them more power because high taxes give them money to spend. Without a huge chunk from your paycheck going to Washington, we would not have the John P. Murtha Institute for Homeland Security, the Ted Stevens Marine Research Institute or the Robert C. Byrd Institute for Advanced Flexible Manufacturing. Armed with your money, these lawmakers can buy themselves re-election, prestige and campaign contributions. Murtha, for example, inserted $114 million in earmarks into the 2007 defense appropriations bill, and each of the 26 recipients gave money to his campaign. Lower taxes would mean fewer contributors for these guys.

Government contractors, road builders and government employees, if they’re grateful, all appreciate April 15 because tax money is their lifeblood. They are the tax receivers. It’s no wonder the top contributor to all federal campaigns over the past 20 years is not some corporation or ideological organization, but the American Federation of State, County, & Municipal Employees — with almost every dollar going to Democrats. Your taxes underwrite their paychecks, buy their new monitors and cover their health care costs even after they retire.

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But businesses are often tax receivers, too; for example, think of Murtha’s friends, who pocketed his earmarks. Similarly, in Virginia’s 2002 effort to increase sales taxes to build more roads, top donors to the pro-tax-increase campaign included the Virginia Transportation Construction Industry Association, the Washington Infrastructure Industry Association and Bechtel Infrastructure Corporation. In other words, road builders like tax increases because tax dollars become road dollars.

Then there are the accountants, the tax preparers, the tax lawyers and the tax lobbyists — I call them the tax parasites. If taxes were lower, we wouldn’t pay as much to find little loopholes, deductions and shelters. If taxes were simpler, more of us could do them ourselves. Most importantly, a stable, broad-based, low tax rate would put tax lobbyists out of work.

Milton Friedman made the case that lawmakers are tax parasites, too:

“Why is it that hardly a year passes without a new tax bill? The reason is that so long as a tax bill is under consideration, with many billions of dollars at stake, lobbyists are actively pressing for the introduction or retention of special provisions to benefit their clients. And so long as lobbyists are active, thousand-dollar-a-plate dinners and similar devices will tap them for campaign funds.”

The winners of the tax lobbying games then become constituencies for higher marginal tax rates, because they are now the tax shelters. Why are cabbies always smiling when it’s pouring outside? For the same reason umbrella salesman are: When it’s raining, people are willing to pay for shelter. It’s the same with taxes. The higher the tax rates, the more you’ll pay for a tax shelter.

Why has the National Association of Realtors spent more than any other business political action committee since 1989? To protect the home-interest mortgage deduction. Why has the PAC given a majority of its money in the last two cycles to Democrats? Because it doesn’t mind high tax rates; lower tax rates would reduce the incentives to buy homes.

Don’t get me wrong, some of my best friends — perfectly upstanding people who need to feed their families, too — are tax bandits. But if you’re a politician, a government employee, a shrewd businessman, a lobbyist or a tax accountant, maybe this week you could just say “thank you” to the rest of us.

Examiner columnist Timothy P. Carney is senior reporter for the Evans & Novak Political Report.