Deep in the Heart of Taxes

It's time to stop procrastinating and get started on the dreaded income tax. I tried out a couple of software programs online this morning and picked one that doesn't frustrate me too much, meaning it doesn't make me actually yell out loud while I'm actively using it.

It will be complicated this year, as I took early IRA distributions to pay for the breathtaking medical expenses. Both calculations will require finding and deciphering head-spinning instructions, and then there are the usual business income and expenses, and Bill's overseas ship incidentals. I know that I could avoid the flying piles of paper and adding machine punching if I did all of this bookkeeping monthly, but I decided a few years back that I really would rather just do it in one all-out annual effort. Why should I get all fatoushed every month, when I could postpone it into just one giant two-week aggravation in February or March?

I'm one of those nuts that supports the Fair Tax (knowing of course, that it will never happen--I'm not that crazy). It's a national sales tax, and has the added benefit of abolishing payroll taxes, corporate income taxes, the IRS and the entire bureaucracy surrounding it. It taxes consumption, not production, which seems like a much better idea to me. It even encourages recycling and reselling, as goods are only taxed once, when they are new. Heck, I'd even go for a Flat Tax, if it just did away with all the paperwork. I realize there are problems with all systems of taxation, and though every politician promises "change," it only gets worse with a new crop of incremental tweeks each year. Around this time of year, I become a cranky anarchist, thinking that the only way to fix things like taxes (or education, or social security, or medical insurance, for that matter), is to abolish the whole system and start all over again.

When I was working for my accountant, there was a reproduction on the wall of the very first income tax form. On line 1, you wrote down your gross income. On line 2, you calculated 1% and sent it in (if you made more than $100,000 your tax was 2%). I'm sure in 1919, it must have seemed simple and innocuous, and not at all like the beastly monster it has become. Sometimes I think I would pay them whatever they wanted if they just sent me a bill instead of making me fill out all these blasted forms.