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April 01, 2005
I hate taxes.
I finally got around to doing my taxes last night. This is the first year that I've had to file a return in which I didn't have it done by the first week of January. My delay this year was mostly because Opera kept screwing up on the TurboTax website; I eventually had to switch to IE to get it to work.
Anyway, that's not the point. The point is, I did my taxes last night, and I owe money. Not much money, mind, but it's the principle of the thing.
My sister, who recently graduated as an accountant and is making her living doing taxes for people, just happened to call as I was wrapping things up, and I'm afraid she caught the brunt of the emotion that I was directing at the entire idea of taxes. (And, of course, complaining that the government was taking my money that I'd worked for branched into a complaint about the ways it's being spent, which became a rant on politics, at which point she shut me up.)
Of course, throughout the year, part of my paycheck is taken away from me and sent to the government. That, though, is almost entirely transparent. Sure, there's a little number on my paycheck that tells me how much was taken from me in order to fund things like an internet study (Thanks to Rob for that link.) that took so long to finish that it's utterly useless, but that number is virtually meaningless to me, because I never see the money. In addition, it's a much smaller number than the real amount that the government steals, because we pretend that the other half is paid "by my employer," which is only true in the same sense that a five-year-old child "pays" for the groceries if they happen to be the one who gives the money to the cashier. Transparent taxes annoy me, but it's nothing like the feeling I get when I actually SEE the money and then it has to be sent to the government.
Of course, I know that taxes are necessary in order to fund the government's operations, but I don't think they need to be nearly as high as they are, and I wish we could move to a system more like the one described by the FairTax proposal.
I'm done ranting now. We now return you to your regularly scheduled internet surfing.
Posted by Robin S. at April 1, 2005 04:56 PM
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