Tax-Time

Like many Americans, I approach tax time with a nervous anticipation akin to taking an aptitude test. I could be a genius. I could be an idiot. I could get some money back or I could owe the government more money. Americans become overwhelmed each year when they sit down to do their taxes (that is, the people who are not having their taxes done by accountants while they sit in their ivory towers) focused on compliance. I better make sure everything is correct or the big bad government may smite me, smite me right in the crotch. A few years ago I had to send the IRS money since they informed me I did not pay enough out of my check every week to keep our ignorant, lumbering, debt-incurring behemoth of a government provided with the cash-flow they needed to waste money and make their friends rich. Oh, I sound bitter do I? Well, this check I had to make out to the IRS was four figures. Now you understand my frustration. I finished my taxes this week and sent them off begrudgingly, but I thought I should channel my feelings into knowledge. In my internet endeavor to find out how much of a percentage we pay in yearly income tax I came across this page on the Now and Futures website. Their page has a good breakdown of what percentage we pay of our total income to taxes, and I think I just got sick to my stomach. This was way too infuriating of a topic. If you live in a state with no income tax you have roughly 25% taken out of your paycheck. That does not include sales tax, fuel tax, property tax, and other miscellaneous taxes. Wow, I have finally arrived. I have a spouse, a house, and $40,000 per year job. Let me see what I can buy or if I can have kids. Where is all my money going? I make $40,000 an effin year! You see, that $40,000 is really less than $30,000 after the government takes what they have earned by you breaking your back at your crap job. You are not really making what you think you are making. Bottom line: the government that gives us lip service about wanting to make this country great again and says they want to stimulate the country and see growth is really hurting us by wasting the money we do pay in income tax. Good, so we have a cycle that will only hasten the sun setting on American civilization. Way to accentuate the positive, huh?