Tax Day – 2017

🎶🎶Hello tax-day my old friend.
I have mailed my return into you again.
Because an audit softly creeping…
The sound of silence🎶🎶

It is income tax deadline day and time to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. Once again, and for probably the rest of my life, I have had to pay someone to do my taxes. It is not because I lack the math skills or the initiative or the reason to do them. No, it is because they are so damn complicated. I tried to do it myself 3 years ago, just to see if my numbers were somewhat in line with our accountant’s… Nope, not even close. I would have underpaid a bit more the $3900.00… That would have been so bad for us!

I have resigned myself to hiring professionals to keep me from doing anything stupid and to pay the correct amount.  I gladly pay my taxes as I really like having navy ships, great roads, infrastructure, medical care, libraries, the FAA, etc…  These things cost money and it is a shared burden that I gladly buy into.

It does however chap me a little bit to pay a fair chunk of money every year and then confronted with government waste and pork-barrel politics. Over 5 BILLION in questionable funding in 2016, including:

  1. $300,000 to study boys and girls playing with Barbie dolls.
  2. $450,000 to research whether dinosaurs could sing.
  3. $460,000 to have computers binge watch the television show Desperate Housewives in an attempt to predict and understand human behavior.
  4. $12 million by the IRS on an unused email archiving service. It failed to install the activation software.

 

And then there is the 2016 Congressional Pork Report

What I Want Thursday – 3/15/12

Time again to reflect on some crap that I have been obsessing over for the last couple of weeks:

1.  To be in Hawaii on vacation with my wife and OUT of cell phone range
2.  To organize and back up all my computer files and pictures from the mess of harddrives and CDs/DVDs
3.  For my shop to be back up to 100% after the break in
4.  A fantastic sport coat
5.  For it to be sunny and 70 degrees outside my house
6.  A Midi-Lathe to complete some house and garden turning projects
7.  A sliding tool box for my truck
8.  A set of 2010 leather-bound Encyclopedia Britannica
9.  To get a real, hand written, paper letter from my son and daughter
10.  To never  worry about the IRS or April 15th EVER again.
11.  I want to ride my bike like I did when I was 12:  aimlessly and all day!!
12.  More time…