Taxes in a Time of Taxes

It's April 15th, and depending where you are, you still have time to file your taxes here in the United States. (Either on your computer or by dropping it off at an open post office.) And not to worry if you've somehow forgotten about tax seasons end. You can still file tomorrow. As long as you don't owe you shouldn't have to worry about penalties, otherwise...

But it is our annual process. We balance out the books. We had the government withhold some of our income, and it now learns how much of that it should keep to pay into supporting our society, and how much it should return to us. Unless you didn't do withholding on your wages, and then you get to pay in now. (But really it is a matter of taste. You can either put the money at the start, or you can plan a year ahead and save the money to pay in. Whatever works best for you.) W-4's matter.


Sadly people have a visceral hate for our system to handle the funding of our country. Love the armed forces, fixed roads, border protection. Hate actually having to pay for these things. Hating on the IRS is an easy way to get some cheers. It's an honest reaction. But it's not altogether a rational one. It can be tragically irrational.

So...This what you do when you owe money?

A collection of accountants and bureaucrats, that some how get painted as evil for doing vital work, The IRS is given a function. Make sure people pay in what we as a society agree to do. Sure not everyone does pay in...But we all need to make changes to get billionaires, corporations, and ministries to get with it. (How is it that the powerful who skip out on taxes aren't painted as the villains?)

Fighting for America by moving profits overseas, and living
the good life (while having it's workforce live on Medicaid
and Food Snap).

With some more on the IRS's importance:

What the IRS does is crucial in our government, and for our country. Yet it's is spited, has it's budget gutted, it's understaffed, and people plot and attack them. Yet people are always eager to boo them. They aren't Captain Hook in a Pantomime.

But don't tell that to the hack comics on politics.

"And at this moment there are a gazillion agents working at the IRS."

As Ted Cruz started his presidential campaign recently, he has the IRS right in the midst of his silly stump speech. As he explains, he'll close the IRS (And how will he fund government then?), he'll take all the "IRS agents" and put them on the Southern border of the United States as guards...Which is so dumb that...So dumb. But it gets cheers. (We won't even get into Cruz's number of agents, which started out inflated, and continues to grow.)

It's the dumb guy on the street thing to say. And Cruz is the guy to mutter it.


For more of what the IRS deals with from Cracked.Com, 5 Bizarre Things You Only Learn About The US As An IRS Agent.


Sorry. It isn't a popular thing to say or write, but I don't have a problem with the IRS. They are a flawed organization. But they are also a necessary one. Hating them for handling taxation is like hating my dentist for filling my cavities.When you're a kid you might hate or fear dentist, but then you grow up.

We do grow up, right?