Tax Break(down)s
Yesterday I got a big slap in the face from reality.
I did my taxes. Wait, take that back. I talked about doing my taxes. I would have done my taxes except I was missing one of my W-2 forms, so I have to go track that down. And that's just the beginning of it all: to even do my stupid taxes, I have to put forth the effort of searching out how it ended up that I didn't receive my W-2, which is, as my father informed me, legally due to me by February 1st. Already, problems. Problems already.
My initial tantrum, due to me missing my W-2, was nothing compared to the fit I threw for the rest of the hour and a half that my father and I sat in the GSU, him trying to explain to me the logic behind taxes and filling out the forms and figuring out deductions and rules, and me trying to explain to him that I think the entire concept is a big crock.
Turns out, neither was really possible.
I think taxes are a bunch of bullshit. I really do, but nobody else seems to be with me on this. In the past twenty four hours, I've talked to several smart people about taxes, and it's very disheartening to hear the responses - which, by the way, are pretty much apathetic nods. Nobody seems to care about taxes. Everyone seems to just accept that every year, they will give back an insane amount of money to the government, just like that, without any resistance or complaint. People care more about the fact that they have to fill out paperwork than they do that filling out that paperwork will either result in losing money or reminding them of how much money they lost over the course of collecting their paychecks.
Well I won't have this. I just won't. I'll pay my taxes. I considered not paying them, but my father told me that if I don't pay them, the government just comes up with punishments and charges me more money. This sounds even worse, so I went with the lesser of the two evils and decided to just go along with the rest of the herd and pay my taxes. But I won't be happy about it. I refuckingfuse to be happy about it. Or be okay with it. Or pretend that it's just a fact of life that I have to accept. I'll say that I do it because I don't want to deal with the worse things that will happen to me if I don't comply. And that's it.
Here's the thing. I vividly remember getting my first paycheck of the spring. I had worked a ridiculous amount of time before receiving the check, and so I calculated it in my head and realized that I was going to be receiving a mothhher of a check. Then I saw the stub, and I realized that it was at least a few hundred dollars short of what I had envisioned. Now, look, I know my math is pretty shoddy, but even I could do a better estimate than what the check was showing. So I looked it over and realized (and here was the death of my work-to-earn-money innocence) that the discrepancy was because of taxes. In my mind, I had worked the time and therefore, I was owed the money. In the government's mind, I had worked the time and was owed only some of the money because they were also owed money. Riiight. How does this not sound like the big brother/sister insisting on earning a percentage of the little kids' lemonade sale, even though throughout the whole sale, the kids worked outside and poured the lemonade and got the customers while the big kid got to sit inside in the AC? It sounds like exactly the same thing.
The argument that people have been using against my argument is this: I pay taxes, like for social security, for my future. Well, here's a wake up call, freaks: there is no national financial future, except for a big bleak one that holds only a garbage can big enough for all of our wasted dollars in social security taxes. People tried to make me feel better about the fact that I don't get any refund from any of the social security tax dollars I pay. They said that even though I'm not putting it away from my future, and even though the deficit makes any idea of future financial hope a joke, I'm paying for people like my grandparents. This just makes me want to tell my grandmother to be nice to me and eat the soup I probably helped pay for. It doesn't make me feel any better.
Did you know, for instance, that if you pro-rated the amount you have to pay for taxes if you were working full-time, you'd have to work until May to earn enough money to pay your taxes? Four months, you work for nothing. I did the math, and I worked about three weeks for absolutely nothing. Obviously, compared to the four months, that's not bad, but if you figure that I'm only working about 12 weeks a year seriously, then that's a lot of time. What's the point of working when all that's going to happen is that you're going to have to give back?
You know what, I'm tired of this. Why can't I choose a celebrity to pay my taxes for me? You know how they have "Big Brothers/Big Sisters"? Well, how about a "Big Brother/Big Sister Tax Edition." Everyone's crazy about adding "editions" to existing successful businesses and concepts, so here's one for you: a wealthy celebrity, or for that matter, it could just be a wealthy person, takes on a non-wealthy person and pays his or her taxes. See, the thing is, everyone reading this thinks, "Okay, that is ridiculous, what a crazy idea, nobody will go for it." Well, who the hell came up with the idea of taxes? And what morons okayed the practice of taxing people who are still in debt, or still trying to pay off loans, or who are just starting out in life? Who said, "Yes, let's have a system where people come take my money from me, which I'm working so hard to earn? That sounds like a good plan!"
Here's some irony for you: my guess is that Thomas Jefferson or another bigwig decided on this tax business, which is quite ironic if you consider that part of what began the whole brouhaha with the New World/England was the whole taxing issue. And what do these people go and do? Set forth taxes. Don't people learn anything from the past?!
Obviously not. Thomas Jefferson didn't have any problems paying the taxes though, because he was famous and earned all of his money off a plantation that he had run by slaves. I bet if he had to pay his employees (the slaves), he wouldn't have all that money to just play with and send into the government without any problems. But he didn't have these issues to consider. Wealthy people can just pay taxes without really feeling the pinch at all, so why do they get all the tax breaks?
This brings me to the person I'm reallly upset with. I'm not into politics, but when it affects me directly (I know, I know, everything affects me if I really knew about politics), I have to say something. I want George W. Bush to pay my taxes. I want him to contribute some of his fortune into fixing the deficit that his administration let happen. Have Dick Cheney and his hunting buddies (well, maybe a few of them, ex-hunting buddies) put some cash into that. How is it that these politicans, with millions of bucks in the bank, can have the audacity to get up in front of the American public and tell them that all that money that they made - all that money that they contributed to, through all of these goddamn taxes - is gone? Worse, that even contributing current and future taxes won't get us back to anywhere good for a very long time? How is everyone okay with this?
Well, I'm not. I'm not okay with the fact that I'm paying for a pretty much defunct social security fund. And I'm not okay with paying all these taxes and not getting the refund back that I was expecting - not nearly even close to it. And I'm definitely not okay with all of the complications that go into having to figure out all the paperwork about how much you have to owe. What the hell is that about? If I've had my taxes withheld, why can't I just click a check on an online site that says so and have everyone leave it at that? Isn't it ridiculous to anyone else that I have to spend significant time telling someone else how much I owe THEM? In what world does this make sense? Have you ever heard of a client or patron figuring out his bill or ringing himself up on the register? Absolutely not. If you want money from me, tell me exactly how much I owe and we'll go from there. But I have to figure out these booklets and these forms and track them down? I don't think so.
And yet, we do it. We all have to do it. I don't have a choice because otherwise I'll be in even more trouble. So I have to spend the time figuring out the forms and finding out why I don't have one of my W-2s. And I need a job to support myself, so I'm going to have to get one, even if a third of the time, I'm working for nothing. When I expressed my dismay at my taxes, my father looked at me in bewilderment. "I've never seen someone complain this loudly about their taxes," he told me. "It's something you just have to do. Everyone does it."
"Look," I told him. "Just because everyone else is going to walk off the cliff doesn't mean I have to follow."
Well, as in too many other instances, I was wrong. I'm going to have to walk off that stupid cliff just like everyone else and pay my stupid taxes and get half as much as I should back in my refund.
And, as always, there's one last bit of irony in my life: somewhere along the way, as I was complaining about how much we pay in taxes, I realized that part of the reason we pay so much is to cover for other people. Like the poor, but also for the people who cheat on their taxes and don't pay. For example, Richard Hatch, of Survivor fame, didn't pay his taxes on the winnings and now he's in trouble and because he didn't pay, I pay more. This is obviously outrageous and unfair, but the kicker, and it's a kicker, is that my father is a defense tax attorney. If people didn't have tax issues, he wouldn't have a job. I'm sure he will enjoy me portraying his career in such a positive light, and it's not just that people cheat on taxes - but also that they make mistakes or have issues paying them in general (and you know what, I can undersatnd that) - but if people just paid their taxes without issue, he wouldn't have a job. So there's some irony. Maybe I should like taxes because their existence provided my father with a job and me with everything I needed growing up. Maybe if I were mature, I could look at them as bittersweet.
Too bad. I'm not mature. I don't like this whole tax thing at all. I was planning on getting some serious cash back. I was planning a shopping spree and everything. Turns out, I'm going to just have to work more instead. And "more" really is the operative word there, because apparently, to make the money I estimate I'm going to make, I have to be working more hours than I originally figured. I'm not going to change the system. I'm not able to fight the system. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. And me, I'm the loser right in between who thinks she's working to get richer but in reality is working to pay for the poor getting poorer and the rich who want more tax breaks.
Goddamnit, I got schooled.
I did my taxes. Wait, take that back. I talked about doing my taxes. I would have done my taxes except I was missing one of my W-2 forms, so I have to go track that down. And that's just the beginning of it all: to even do my stupid taxes, I have to put forth the effort of searching out how it ended up that I didn't receive my W-2, which is, as my father informed me, legally due to me by February 1st. Already, problems. Problems already.
My initial tantrum, due to me missing my W-2, was nothing compared to the fit I threw for the rest of the hour and a half that my father and I sat in the GSU, him trying to explain to me the logic behind taxes and filling out the forms and figuring out deductions and rules, and me trying to explain to him that I think the entire concept is a big crock.
Turns out, neither was really possible.
I think taxes are a bunch of bullshit. I really do, but nobody else seems to be with me on this. In the past twenty four hours, I've talked to several smart people about taxes, and it's very disheartening to hear the responses - which, by the way, are pretty much apathetic nods. Nobody seems to care about taxes. Everyone seems to just accept that every year, they will give back an insane amount of money to the government, just like that, without any resistance or complaint. People care more about the fact that they have to fill out paperwork than they do that filling out that paperwork will either result in losing money or reminding them of how much money they lost over the course of collecting their paychecks.
Well I won't have this. I just won't. I'll pay my taxes. I considered not paying them, but my father told me that if I don't pay them, the government just comes up with punishments and charges me more money. This sounds even worse, so I went with the lesser of the two evils and decided to just go along with the rest of the herd and pay my taxes. But I won't be happy about it. I refuckingfuse to be happy about it. Or be okay with it. Or pretend that it's just a fact of life that I have to accept. I'll say that I do it because I don't want to deal with the worse things that will happen to me if I don't comply. And that's it.
Here's the thing. I vividly remember getting my first paycheck of the spring. I had worked a ridiculous amount of time before receiving the check, and so I calculated it in my head and realized that I was going to be receiving a mothhher of a check. Then I saw the stub, and I realized that it was at least a few hundred dollars short of what I had envisioned. Now, look, I know my math is pretty shoddy, but even I could do a better estimate than what the check was showing. So I looked it over and realized (and here was the death of my work-to-earn-money innocence) that the discrepancy was because of taxes. In my mind, I had worked the time and therefore, I was owed the money. In the government's mind, I had worked the time and was owed only some of the money because they were also owed money. Riiight. How does this not sound like the big brother/sister insisting on earning a percentage of the little kids' lemonade sale, even though throughout the whole sale, the kids worked outside and poured the lemonade and got the customers while the big kid got to sit inside in the AC? It sounds like exactly the same thing.
The argument that people have been using against my argument is this: I pay taxes, like for social security, for my future. Well, here's a wake up call, freaks: there is no national financial future, except for a big bleak one that holds only a garbage can big enough for all of our wasted dollars in social security taxes. People tried to make me feel better about the fact that I don't get any refund from any of the social security tax dollars I pay. They said that even though I'm not putting it away from my future, and even though the deficit makes any idea of future financial hope a joke, I'm paying for people like my grandparents. This just makes me want to tell my grandmother to be nice to me and eat the soup I probably helped pay for. It doesn't make me feel any better.
Did you know, for instance, that if you pro-rated the amount you have to pay for taxes if you were working full-time, you'd have to work until May to earn enough money to pay your taxes? Four months, you work for nothing. I did the math, and I worked about three weeks for absolutely nothing. Obviously, compared to the four months, that's not bad, but if you figure that I'm only working about 12 weeks a year seriously, then that's a lot of time. What's the point of working when all that's going to happen is that you're going to have to give back?
You know what, I'm tired of this. Why can't I choose a celebrity to pay my taxes for me? You know how they have "Big Brothers/Big Sisters"? Well, how about a "Big Brother/Big Sister Tax Edition." Everyone's crazy about adding "editions" to existing successful businesses and concepts, so here's one for you: a wealthy celebrity, or for that matter, it could just be a wealthy person, takes on a non-wealthy person and pays his or her taxes. See, the thing is, everyone reading this thinks, "Okay, that is ridiculous, what a crazy idea, nobody will go for it." Well, who the hell came up with the idea of taxes? And what morons okayed the practice of taxing people who are still in debt, or still trying to pay off loans, or who are just starting out in life? Who said, "Yes, let's have a system where people come take my money from me, which I'm working so hard to earn? That sounds like a good plan!"
Here's some irony for you: my guess is that Thomas Jefferson or another bigwig decided on this tax business, which is quite ironic if you consider that part of what began the whole brouhaha with the New World/England was the whole taxing issue. And what do these people go and do? Set forth taxes. Don't people learn anything from the past?!
Obviously not. Thomas Jefferson didn't have any problems paying the taxes though, because he was famous and earned all of his money off a plantation that he had run by slaves. I bet if he had to pay his employees (the slaves), he wouldn't have all that money to just play with and send into the government without any problems. But he didn't have these issues to consider. Wealthy people can just pay taxes without really feeling the pinch at all, so why do they get all the tax breaks?
This brings me to the person I'm reallly upset with. I'm not into politics, but when it affects me directly (I know, I know, everything affects me if I really knew about politics), I have to say something. I want George W. Bush to pay my taxes. I want him to contribute some of his fortune into fixing the deficit that his administration let happen. Have Dick Cheney and his hunting buddies (well, maybe a few of them, ex-hunting buddies) put some cash into that. How is it that these politicans, with millions of bucks in the bank, can have the audacity to get up in front of the American public and tell them that all that money that they made - all that money that they contributed to, through all of these goddamn taxes - is gone? Worse, that even contributing current and future taxes won't get us back to anywhere good for a very long time? How is everyone okay with this?
Well, I'm not. I'm not okay with the fact that I'm paying for a pretty much defunct social security fund. And I'm not okay with paying all these taxes and not getting the refund back that I was expecting - not nearly even close to it. And I'm definitely not okay with all of the complications that go into having to figure out all the paperwork about how much you have to owe. What the hell is that about? If I've had my taxes withheld, why can't I just click a check on an online site that says so and have everyone leave it at that? Isn't it ridiculous to anyone else that I have to spend significant time telling someone else how much I owe THEM? In what world does this make sense? Have you ever heard of a client or patron figuring out his bill or ringing himself up on the register? Absolutely not. If you want money from me, tell me exactly how much I owe and we'll go from there. But I have to figure out these booklets and these forms and track them down? I don't think so.
And yet, we do it. We all have to do it. I don't have a choice because otherwise I'll be in even more trouble. So I have to spend the time figuring out the forms and finding out why I don't have one of my W-2s. And I need a job to support myself, so I'm going to have to get one, even if a third of the time, I'm working for nothing. When I expressed my dismay at my taxes, my father looked at me in bewilderment. "I've never seen someone complain this loudly about their taxes," he told me. "It's something you just have to do. Everyone does it."
"Look," I told him. "Just because everyone else is going to walk off the cliff doesn't mean I have to follow."
Well, as in too many other instances, I was wrong. I'm going to have to walk off that stupid cliff just like everyone else and pay my stupid taxes and get half as much as I should back in my refund.
And, as always, there's one last bit of irony in my life: somewhere along the way, as I was complaining about how much we pay in taxes, I realized that part of the reason we pay so much is to cover for other people. Like the poor, but also for the people who cheat on their taxes and don't pay. For example, Richard Hatch, of Survivor fame, didn't pay his taxes on the winnings and now he's in trouble and because he didn't pay, I pay more. This is obviously outrageous and unfair, but the kicker, and it's a kicker, is that my father is a defense tax attorney. If people didn't have tax issues, he wouldn't have a job. I'm sure he will enjoy me portraying his career in such a positive light, and it's not just that people cheat on taxes - but also that they make mistakes or have issues paying them in general (and you know what, I can undersatnd that) - but if people just paid their taxes without issue, he wouldn't have a job. So there's some irony. Maybe I should like taxes because their existence provided my father with a job and me with everything I needed growing up. Maybe if I were mature, I could look at them as bittersweet.
Too bad. I'm not mature. I don't like this whole tax thing at all. I was planning on getting some serious cash back. I was planning a shopping spree and everything. Turns out, I'm going to just have to work more instead. And "more" really is the operative word there, because apparently, to make the money I estimate I'm going to make, I have to be working more hours than I originally figured. I'm not going to change the system. I'm not able to fight the system. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. And me, I'm the loser right in between who thinks she's working to get richer but in reality is working to pay for the poor getting poorer and the rich who want more tax breaks.
Goddamnit, I got schooled.
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