Pay your masters today. For those of you getting money back, you do realize that you just gave the gummint an interest free loan dontcha? If everyone had to sit down and write the gummint a check on April 15 and see what they actually pay in taxes, the tax code would change real quickly. Withholding is a brilliant scam.
Update: Karl U has a great post for tax day. Go read it! Now! This is sumpin’ I should have written but didn’t because I’m really bummed out about a lot of things.
April 14th should be Election Day. It’d go a long way towards curtailing a lot of both Party’s bullshit.
No- April 16. I keep seeing long lines of cars snaking up to the post office after sundown on Apr 15. Some of them even filling out forms.
I’m always amazed when I hear somebody say “I got so much money back! ! !”
I worked with a guy who said he didn’t have to pay taxes. In fact, he said the IRS sent him money every year. No use discussing it with him any further.
Boortz used to do a riff on that every year. He told his readers and listeners to ask their friends and co-workers how much they had to pay in taxes. He predicted that most of them would reply, “I didn’t have to pay anything. I got money back.” The dumb uninformed voter in action.
And what a hypocritical bit of bullshit irony that the IRS can use people’s money all year and then simply refund it, but when the shoe is on the other foot, they start demanding additional quarterly payments for future years, adding interest and assessing penalties. I’m with you, Denny, if withholding was abolished and people had to pay their taxes out of hand, change would come, and I doubt it would be peaceful.
Harry Reid says paying income tax is voluntary:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R7mRSI8yWwga
IRS withholding was a “temporary wartime measure.”
Instituted by FDR.
For once (in 28 years) my withholding was almost equal to my taxes. End the end, I owed $6. Just to make a point, I went to my bank to get a bank check to pay that $6, expecting to pay about $10 just for the check…and the darn teller didn’t charge me for it… For next year, I’m going to adjust my withholding by $0.31 and see if I can get the ammount owed to less than $0.01.
On the other hand, I think it would be better for everyone if the government spent about 30% of what it does.
When I was in the U.S. Army (way back when), when payday came (and we all got paid in Coin of the Realm), we’d march single file up to the Paymaster, get our little envelope, and then on our way out, there’d be a line of Sergeants collecting for Old Soldiers’ Homes and things like that.