Make sure you get everything!

So I went to check my mail today, a little habit I've developed on all non-Sundays. I had two pieces of mail today. A bill from Comcast was one. I don't know why they send me paper bills. I don't even open them. I pay all my bills online and I get emails informing me when I have a bill anyway, so why waste the postage to tell me in another medium? Who cares? My last cable bill included my MLB Extra Innings charge which made it $257 as opposed to the normal $88. Sure felt good submitted that payment. Anyway, I always think "what are you doing?" when I see a utility bill in the mail.

The other piece of mail I had was of much greater interest and concern to me, however. It was from our friends at the Internal Revenue Service. I could tell by the envelope that it wasn't my "refund" (a term which I don't really care for). My heart immediately went into my throat. I thought I was getting audited, but why? I filed a 1040EZ, it's kind of hard to mess that up, but I did it with Turbo Tax just to make sure. Besides, I spent about 75% of 2006 earning $8.65 an hour. Why would they audit me? Furthermore, what's involved with an audit? This could be a major pain in my ass.

As soon as I got back to my car (my mailbox is a ways away from my apartment, so I usually grab it on the way out the door) I opened the envelope. No audit, thankfully. But what the letter said brought a sad smile to my face. My "refund" due from this most recent tax return was set to be $142. The letter stated that I still owed federal fees of $6.25, so my adjusted return would now be $135.75. Make sure you get every last drop, fellas.

I knew where this came from. Back in 2005, when filing my 2004 return, I noted that nobody could claim me as a dependant, and was due a "refund" of $340. I e-filed that return and cashed my check when it showed up four to six weeks later. Later that summer, for some reason, I looked at the return and noticed that what I put for dependant status. Now, my Dad always files an extension and does his taxes in October, so he hadn't filed his yet. I called him up. This is how that conversation went.

"Dad, I said on my return that no one could claim me as a dependant. Were you planning on claiming me?"

"Uhhh, yeah."

"OK. What should I do?"

"You need to file an amended return. It'll mean a whole lot more money for me than it will for you, and they'll audit the shit out of me if I claim you as one, when you said that nobody else could."

So that's what I did. This was in August 2005. I redid my taxes and filed whatever form the amended 1040EZ is. I wound up owing Uncle Sam $390. They, of course, wanted their $340 back, and the change in status meant that I owed them $50 more. Keep in mind that I'm in college here. I'm making around $8.25 an hour at the animal labs then. Plus, I was trying like crazy to pay my truck off completely. The bill on that was $355 a month. At this point I was paying around $400 a time to take care of late payment charges that I'd accrued a few times in college when I couldn't afford to write that check the day it was due. So it's not like I had a whole ton of extra cash lying around anyway. That August was a VERY lean month for me, in large part because I had to pay for my income tax filing mistake. But I got it taken care of, somehow. Actually, I got through it by borrowing some coin from my grandmother, but that's neither here nor there.

A few months later I get a letter in the mail from the IRS stating that I owe them $6.25 in accrued interest from the amended return. I put this letter on my desk at my house with the intention of paying it. But, as those of you who saw my college house will attest, I didn't live in the cleanest environment. I never saw that letter again and forgot how much they wanted from me anyway. I knew it wasn't much, certainly not enough for them to lock me up over.

When I filed my return the next year, I owed some money, so I took care of that and didn't think anything more about it. I'd forgotten all about those six plus dollars, but I guess our federal government didn't. By the way, I find it hilarious that they charged me interest over those couple of months when an income tax "refund" is really extra money that you pay to the government over the course of the year, which is held WITHOUT interest, and returned to you as taxable income. Seems like a double standard to me, but I can't get too upset since I'm completely powerless to do anything about it.

The amount of tax that we as citizens pay in this country is simply mind boggling to me. I love it when I hear one of these pseudo-intellectuals say "well we don't pay that much because people in Europe pay a whole lot more." By that logic, Adolph Hitler wasn't such a bad guy because Pil Pot killed a whole lot more people.

Think about everything that we are taxed on. Here is a list right off the top of my head. And before I write this list, think about the recent crackdown on Online Gambling that this country saw this past fall. Is there any reason to wage such an attack on this industry, other than that the government can't tax the billions of dollars flowing down the Caribbean for gambling purposes?

Income tax
Property tax
Ad Volorem tax
Estate tax
Gift tax
Capital Gains tax* (didn't Bush repeal that? That would be one of the rare good things that he has done)
Sales tax
State income tax
Excise tax
City tax (if you live in New York City for example)
Gas tax
Benefit taxes (IE, the taxes that have to be paid on the $100 gift cards we got at work)
Airport taxes
Rental car taxes
Sept 11 Security Fees
Tax on early withdrawal of 401(k) or IRA
Liquor tax
Tobacco tax
etc etc etc

I seem to recall that the issue of too much taxation was a major causal factor the revolution some years back. I remember hearing about how a bunch of guys were pissed off about the idea of a "tea tax" that they threw a couple tons of tea into the Boston Bay as a way of telling England "you can stick this tea and tea tax straight up your non-representative asses." Now we have a bunch of pussies who go around saying "We have no right to complain about our taxes when you consider what they pay in Europe." You know, the day I start feeling good about things here because of the standards in France, that's the day I'll just go ahead and roll all the way over.

This isn't about the Fair Tax or anything like that, although I think it's a great idea, too great and too fair to ever have a chance of passing. This is about us, as citizens, being taxed at every single turn of our lives. It's not right. I realize that the government is running a fairly large deficit right now. And if they'd spend their money with any level of discipline or prudence, I'd feel more sympathetic to their plight. But as far as I can tell, they just waste money up there. Do we really need a National Endowment for the Arts? Do we really need to programs like "Partnership for a Drug Free America"?

Would you feel sorry for a neighbor who asked you to borrow money if he had 50" television, the best cable TV package, a top model cell phone, a cabinet full of liquor and a refrigerator full of beer, and a pocket bulging with a pack of cigarettes? You'd probably say "You know, if you'd stop pissing your money away on things that you don't need, you'd be able to take care of things that you do."

Unfortunately, the only way to tell the government that is at the ballot box, and good luck there. The majority of people in this country don't even realize how much tax they're paying because they get a "refund" after filing their income taxes, and simply don't think about how the $4 here and $9 there in sales and other embedded taxes add up.

So take your damn $6.25. Maybe you can buy some hunk of twisted iron to stick in front of a courthouse somewhere.