Armchair Pundits

Life's Certainties

With there being only two certainties in life and since my being alive negates one, that means the only thing certain in my life right now is taxes. Yes, it is that time of year again. I spent a good chunk of time this weekend getting a majority of my taxes done. I had already spent a few hours getting everything lined up. And I would have finished them a few weeks back, but one of my mutual fund companies failed to send me my cost-basis information, which I eventually ended up just calculating myself. I have probably under an hour left. Then I’ll sign my John Hancock so that they can haul me off to prison when they discover that I improperly classified a payment I received as a capital gain instead of miscellaneous other income (it really was a capital gain). And then, I will be finished with that task for another year.

Despite all my recent complaints about taxes (don’t get me started on triple bracket jumps under the withholding rules or taxing the sales of automobiles between individuals), when it actual comes down to paying my taxes, I really don’t mind doing it. Do I think that I pay too much in taxes? Yes, I do. But, as a citizen of this great country, I must help support to government. I am not a member of the Posse Comitatus. I do believe that the government has the right to tax its citizens. But I do have some ideas about improving the our tax system. In addition, my ideas would also improve our political system as well.

Humors Aside: At the young age of one or two, my parents took me to dine with some people who attended their church from time to time. These people turned out to be tax protestors. The husband told my father that if the government sent agents to bring him in he hoped they were Christians because he was going to send them to their maker. Years later, this gentleman ended up being arrested for conspiring to blow-up a federal court house. Apparently, I used to run with a really wild crowd.

So, here are my ideas on reforming the tax code. First of all, we need to get rid of withholding. This it the biggest scam out there. Whether or not I owe the tax, the government collects it from me. So, I end up loaning the government money and they pay it back to me in April. They don’t even pay me interest for using my money. But, getting rid of withholding will not be enough. The second thing that must be done to make my master plan complete is that the filing deadline for taxes must be changed. The date must be changed from April 15th to the Monday before election day.

These two changes, if implemented, would have a great impact on our tax system. Think about it. Because there is no withholding, every year, you would be required to write the government a check and for most of us, that would be a very big check. This would help us think a bit more about where that money is going. In addition, you would be writing that very large check on the day before you vote. I think this would do a lot for the way our government is run too. For the first time, the people who spend our tax money would be closely linked in the minds of those who pay taxes to their tax bill. I also believe that there would be a huge increase in the ranks of the Republican Party.

Will these changes ever be made? No. I know that it is just a dream. Most people in this country have problems balancing their check book. For these people, trying to set aside some money to prevent their tax bill from launching them into bankruptcy would be like asking them to solve a quadratic equation or to write a paper discussing how the Treaty of Versailles contributed to the start of World War II. And as for tax day, no politician would ever allow tax day to be so close to election day. They want that day to stay as far away from election day as possible.

So, I will file my taxes with an appropriate amount of stereotypical grumbling. Thankful that I am dealing with this certainty instead of that other certainty.

posted by Squirrel @ 9:26 PM