ARLINGTON, Va. The next time someone smirks when you complain about burdensome government mandates and taxes, explain to them the facts of life as they relate to the unemployment taxes your business pays.

The nations state governments and the U.S. government have created a quirky mess to fund the unemployment compensation system. Not only does it not make a lot of sense but it is, in fact, a drag on increased employment.

Heres how it works (in this case, we use the term "works" loosely):

When times are good, the states, which run the basic system, dont need to raise unemployment compensation tax rates to fund current needs.

But, like most units of government, they tend to ignore the inevitability of economic cycles and are reluctant to raise unemployment compensation tax rates to create a reserve for bad times.

Instead, during a recession, states are apt to rely on loans from the federal government to tide them over until unemployment once again slackens and new unemployment compensation tax revenues (from increased employment) again fill the pot.

The current downturn -- that began in late 2007, producing high unemployment that remains with us today, has changed the dynamic.

First, states have had to pay more unemployment compensation benefits and for a longer time than usual. Forty states ended up having to borrow from the feds to keep their unemployment compensation funds solvent. (That borrowing, of course, exacerbated the nations debt problem.)

But most of those states werent able to pay off their loans on time.

As of September, the federal government started to charge interest about $1 billion worth for 2012 on outstanding loan amounts.

Now, more than half the states have to raise unemployment compensation taxes, or figure out something else to do to both raise the money to cover the interest payments and the continuing unemployment compensation benefits.

In addition, the federal unemployment compensation tax goes up for employers in states that havent repaid the federal loans.

The effect of all this, says Robert Pitcher, who edits a state laws newsletter, can be startling.

In 2009, Florida employers paid $8.40 in unemployment compensation tax per employee. As of last month, they began to pay at the rate of $172 per employee.

In other states, where the unemployment compensation benefits are higher, the rates also are higher.

In Rhode Island, for instance, although the average employer will see an increase per employee of only $23 this year, that addition will make the per-employee amount $753.

Some states are trying to find ways around further burdening their employers, says Pitcher, but there seems to be no easy way out.