If you woke up this morning in a cold sweat, on the edge of panic, wondering where it all went and how you can afford to pay what you don’t have, you are not alone.
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If you woke this morning, looked at the calendar, realized that today was “Tax Day,” and you’ve yet to start your returns, go back to bed. You are too late.
If you woke up this morning, looked in the mirror, and said to yourself, “Oh, what a wonderful day,” you should see a mental health professional.
No day on the calendar unites us as a people more than April 15.
Wage earners big and small, investors and businessman alike bemoan their fate and their tax bills.
Everyone hates taxes.
Who among us hasn’t thought about sending the IRS a toilet seat and bag of hammers instead of a check?
At about $2,000 a crack for the toilet seat and $200 for each hammer, a sack of junk commonly found in most households should cover what you owe the feds. When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ballpoint pens would not work in zero gravity.
To combat this problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 million developing a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to over 300° C.
The Russians use a pencil.
A Reason to Abandon Faith
Knucklehead anecdotes like this make it tough for us to trust our government with the money we pay them.
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Recently, I was thinking about applying for a job with the Obama administration. But then I realized that I didn’t have the requisite qualifications. It’s not that I didn’t go to Harvard or Yale. I missed the boat because I actually pay my taxes on time.
On Tuesday, White House Budget Director Peter Orszag defended President Obama's $3.6 trillion federal budget with its proposal to raise taxes on the richest Americans. Sounds great in theory.
Just because we increase taxes for the richest Americans, however, doesn’t mean they’ll actually pay them.
On countless occasions, my accountant has reminded me that before he could secure his accreditation as a CPA, he had to take a secret blood oath declaring his abhorrence to taxes.
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For the army of lawyers and tax professionals employed by the super rich, protecting their clients’ wealth from the taxman is virtually equivalent to a jihad. If there’s a loophole through which their clients can escape their tax obligations, these guys will find it, or die trying. If an average Joe like you and me had pulled half the shenanigans of the folks working to fix our economy or tax dodgers on Wall Street, we’d probably be breaking rocks at Leavenworth.
Let’s face it. Two things are certain: You’re going to pay taxes and the government will collect, even if it kills you.
As the famed cowboy philosopher Will Rogers once joked: “Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing, and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even.” Does anyone want to join me for a tea party?
John Cohn is a senior partner in the Globe West Financial Group, based in West Los Angeles. He may be contacted at www.globewestfinancial.com
