Tax Day

"Free" At Last?


I'm pleased to report that as April 15th slips by on the calendar, I didn't spend five minutes fooling with income taxes and income tax forms today...

Or Yesterday.

This would be because I've already spent near a hundred dollars on Turbotax software and spent more than a week of my time in January/February meeting my family's Federal and State income tax documentation "requirements."

It drives me crazy that so many people out there in the general population are eligible for a "refund" (read that "earned income credit") and they wait until the last minute to file, end up paying H&R Crock Block $55.95 to file a simple two page tax return, then pay another $30 as interest and fees to procure their "refund anticipation check."

If you're going to take money from me in the form of "earned income credits"...could you at least do it EFFICIENTLY?

I'm one of the first ones to support "trickle down economics," but spending 25% to 30% of your share of my and my fellow "upper income" redistributed taxpayer dollars just to get the ink on the forms and the check in your bank account is ridiculous.

The interesting thing is that, while by law we didn't have to file income tax forms in Tennessee--because Tennessee has no personal state income tax--we managed to fool around and let Pat's company withhold Georgia income tax from her employment severance agreement for the entire year and now the state of Georgia is balking at paying her "refund"/"return" back to her on a timely basis.

Thousands of "tax dollars" stranded in the state coffers, money that should be sitting in our bank accounts instead of theirs...and we've already been through two cycles of written correspondence and a couple of phone calls where the state's position is that it's our fault we can't justfy the "tax return" and they're not getting our paperwork and even if they have..."it will take 4 to 8 weeks for them to process our information" and get back to us.

Government Idiots...

As is typical of the government, they ignore mail and Fax messages and it's virtually impossible to get anyone of authority on the telephone so apparently we're going to be in Government bearucratic hell for the summer trying to prove to the State of Georgia and their inane employees that WE DON'T LIVE THERE ANYMORE.

Even before the dust settled, Georgia made me spend the time and energy to belatedly file a Tennessee Income Tax Form on Pat's behalf showing she owes no income tax in 2008, and that isn't good enough thus far so they insist on still holding OUR money.

As far as I can tell, slavery hasn't ended with Abe Lincoln's administration and the so called "Civil War" of the 1860's

I say that slavery is alive and well today, it's just that the chains and bonds which bind us to our masters are FINANCIAL rather than steel and leather.

I sure hope that you are happy with YOUR government, because if it was MY government things would be quite different on a daily basis.

I've got to go to my tea party now...