(This was written in March of 2013, but I recycle it when income tax irritates me.)
I know it has been a while since I have ranted about some inane bit of trivia. This does not mean that I have not been ranting about inane trivia. I have. I simply have spared you the pain of seeing this site clogged with more flumdummery.
So, here is the deal. The US of A Government thinks we owe taxes. This is on my mind because I have been horsing around with this year’s tax preparation nonsense. That is because the US of A Government has an odd way of handling this situation. Normally if I owe a company money, the company sends me a bill. In this way, I am able to keep the lights on and propane in my pickup. But the US of A Government has another way of collecting. The US of A Government makes me figure out how much I owe them.
Now at first blush, this sounds easy enough, but alas, the US of A Government made up about 145,275 pages of nonsense rules that I need to understand to figure out how much I owe them. Because I have no chance of figuring out more than five of the 145,275 pages of nonsense, I have to buy software programmed by someone who hopefully understands the 145,270 extra pages.
This seems a bit odd. Recently, I went to a car parts store. I was stimulating the economy. When I got to the check-out counter, did they hand me a 145,275 page price book and tell me to figure out how much I owed? No. Furthermore, rather than having to bring my own computer, they had one right there. The store’s computer figured out the amount I owed. I thought this made sense. After all, they were the ones who wanted the money. I was not really in favor of having to pay them money, so it only seemed right that they figure out what I owed.
I hear all the time about tax reform. But I am already retired, and there is still no reform. So, my suggestion is that tax reform work like this: Let the US of A Government figure out how much I owe them and send me a bill. Each member of Congress can make out 5,000 bills a year. This will keep them out of trouble. The rest of the bills can be spread around to other US of A Government officials. Let them go through the 145,275 pages of nonsense. When I get my bill, I will look at it, and if I think there is an error or someone put a number in the wrong slot, I will call them and make them prove that they have filled out the forms correctly. I probably won’t do that because they bore me, but I digress.
This new method of collecting taxes seems only right. I’ll bet that after the US of A Government filled out about a zillion pages, two things would happen. First, they would get tired of wallowing through 145,275 pages of nonsense and reduce it to one simple formula. Second, if they quit spending so much money, they wouldn’t need to send out so many bills. Who knows, they might begin to balance the budget.
After each visit to the auto parts, I think about my budget. That is why I am not trillions of dollars in debt.
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