Skip This if You Hate Trivial Language Discussions

My last post about my language pet peeves reminded me of a discussion (or argument, depending on whom you ask) about whether to use fewer or less in certain sitautions. This particular case involved whether to say: I pay fewer taxes or I pay less taxes.

I thought about this, and both are correct, but have different meanings.

In the first case, "I pay fewer taxes" means that you have fewer separate taxes to pay, regardless of the amounts involved. You might be referring to city, state, and federal taxes, and that's it. You pay fewer taxes than those who pay city, state, federal, inheritance, corporate, and dividend taxes.

In the second case, "I pay less taxes" (and I'd prefer to use "I pay less tax" making "tax" more of a collective noun) means that you pay on the whole less money than another for your taxes. You pay $12,500 a year in taxes; I pay $8,400 a year in taxes.

See?

I love this shit. I wonder why.


By the way, if anyone thinks I'm wrong, please comment and tell me why. I haven't researched this; I just made sense of it myself.