IF YOU ADD UP ALL THOSE FEDERAL TAXES, YOU'RE FORKING OVER THE MOST SINCE WORLD WAR II

"Tax take at post-World War II high" read the headline over an Associated Press dispatch we published last weekend. The total U.S. government haul in taxes -- income, corporate, capital-gains, gasoline, excise taxes, telecommunications, payroll at the federal, state and local levels -- amounts to about 20 percent of the nation's gross domestic product. This is the highest since 1944, a time when all Americans were sacrificing and straining to win a world war.

According to House Ways and Means Committee chairman Bill Archer, R-Texas, business taxes alone make up 20 percent of the cost of goods and services, a hidden tax on the very same middle-income people who also pay so many other, direct taxes. "It all figures into the fabric of the average worker's life, even though it might not directly appear on his 1040 form," Archer said. "We are taking more out of the economy than we need. That has to show up in the bills people are paying, and they don't even know it."

Amen to that. We have long held that one of the worst things government ever did was to institute tax withholding from workers' paychecks. This stealth form of taxation, begun during World War II, hides from rank-and-file wage earners the true, oppressive cost of government.

These figures provide additional impetus for tax cuts. Overtaxed Americans need relief, and they are likely to reward the party that makes plain its intention to offer it.