I was fearful of doing our taxes this year. I was fortunate enough to have a good year last year, largely due to one client. (The same client for which I am still working off part of that income and that now has a moratorium on hiring external writers and a 70-day payment policy on any work it does approve.)
I spent all day this past Sunday filling out the “tax organizer” our accountant uses to prepare our returns. Today, I got the word from him: We owe $3900. This on the same day I read this article in the WSJ and almost burst a brain vein.
So, you might say, Well, if you earned it, you have to pay on it.
It’s not like I haven’t been paying my taxes all year.
Every quarter, I sat at my desk, wrote the check, and sent the federal government an average of $1300, based on last year’s income, which is how you do it when you’re self-employed. I wrote two more checks to the state government and the local government. So, yes, I’ve already paid $5200 in federal taxes just for myself, not counting what Mike “contributed” through direct withholding on his paycheck.
I worked hard. I had my best year ever (after almost 10 years of self-employment). And now I get to pay for that success.
And you know, we didn’t squander the money. The vast majority of it went right to our ongoing house projects.
Yes, my fellow Americans, we are working hard to improve the modest, fixer-upper home we bought almost 4 years ago.
We didn’t buy a brand new $400,000 house we couldn’t afford. (We didn’t even buy a $175,000 house we couldn’t afford.)
We put about 6% of our income into our 401(k)/SEP-IRAs (and we all know how well that turned out).
I pay for my own health insurance. (Mike’s employer had been paying for his health insurance. But we just found out that his insurer is no longer offering small-group coverage. So now we have to find a new policy for him, and possibly pay more for that, too.)
We drive older cars so we don’t have car payments.
We pay off our credit cards every month.
We shop mostly at Wal-Mart, with an occasional foray to Sam’s Club.
We eat out more than we should, mostly at the bar down the street (it’s cheap, and it feels good to support a local business).
We use coupons a lot.
We gave a few hundred dollars to various charities, and donated items to Goodwill.
All in all, we are responsible citizens.
We seem to be in the minority.
I have one question:
Just which one of our bought-more-house-than-they-can-afford, not-working-and-on-welfare, decided-to-have-8-more-babies, lived-the-high-life-on-credit-cards-they-couldn’t-pay-off, “I-won’t-have-to-worry-about-putting-gas-in-my-car, I-won’t-have-to- worry-about-paying-my-mortgage” fellow citizens (or illegal aliens) should I make the check out to?
If, by the mere force of numbers, a majority should
deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right,
it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution.
~ Abraham Lincoln
Writing by Ear 