OK, taxes are finished.
My taxes weren't any harder to complete than past years; thankfully, my situation doesn't change much year to year, so I can pull out my prior year's forms to recall how I worked it out before.
The city of Piqua's forms remain an obscurantist's delight. The whole thing irritates me, because what happens is folks don't even bother to fill out their forms. Instead, they go downtown, and line up, for city employees to fill them out. What a waste of valuable time on the part of our city employees, and thus tax dollars!
Also, here's a lovely thing the city does. If you file your form on time, but you make a mistake, you are penalized as having not filed on time. This is true even if you overpay, and are due a refund! The penalty is deducted from your refund!
Even the federal beadles don't do that! If you overpay, you pay no penalty for making mistakes on your forms.
I have paid penalties twice, even when my mistake was in the city's favor! I.e., they found I was due even more money...then took part of it back.
Now you understand why so many city residents have the city do their taxes.
Good news/bad news: I was due a refund from all arms of Leviathan. I could have had it months ago, but various circumstances made filing my taxes sooner hard to do.
Parting shot: I advocate a tax reform that no one will adopt: everyone who earns any income, however slight, should have to file a federal and state income return--and pay something. Even if you earn only $1,000 in income, then you pay...I dunno, a dime. A penny. But everyone pays something. I really disagree with past tax changes in which the pols brag about "millions of Americans are taken off the tax rolls." If all Americans had to go through the labor of filling out these tax forms, they would be attuned to questions about how simple or complex taxes are--and what's really good for the country. Also, I think it's only right that everyone pay something, even a minimal amount. Even if you get a refundable tax credit. Maybe folks could deposit their dimes at the post office. But the way I look at it, if you want the government to tax anyone's income, you should take part as well.
All right, end of rant. I'm a little grouchy which is what happens when I have to bring my bricks in for Pharaoh.
1 comment:
Father, I agree 1000 percent. If someone pays no income tax, not sure they should have the right to vote and give themselves additional benefits which are now called rights. Saw today that over 50% of households paid not income tax.
I also have a major issue with the public sector workers being unionized and the unions giving huge donations to one party who works more for these unions and public sector employees than they do for all taxpayers. Some equate it to big business donations and getting breaks, but I see a huge difference in the employees work for the taxpayers and the representatives who gain the donations negotiate pay, benefits, and pensions directly with the unions. Political hacks are not going to negotiate very hard for lower costs and lose the donations. With the huge increases we have seen in numbers of public sector employees along with higher pay, benefits, and pensions, there has not been an increase in quality or productivity of these workers that I have seen pre and post unionization in 1959-60.
Finally, as a husband of a former CEO, I had the task for years of working on not only our personal taxes, but those of her business. Each year it took weeks to get it all together and complete, even with some very good software.
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