Tax day is here. This is a yearly ritual in the U.S.
I think it is one of the few days where most people get intimate with what they earn, and the ensuing effort that it takes to produce a tax return.
Apart from the fact that doing the work is not rewarding and that it is easy to feel that one is paying too much, I think that the whole exercise is beneficial: people should know how much they are paying the government. I have been in other places where everything is so automated that one just forgets the whole thing and it is as if taxes never happened and when they change people don’t really find out. They also don’t feel the yearly sense of shock about the experience.
In the end, taxes are paying for services that a lot of people here take for granted. For example roads, a working post office, law enforcement and education for their children. They also pay for Social Security and Medicare: some of the most costly entitlement programs that no politician can risk to touch without a backlash from their constituency.
It is also one of the few days where a lot of people get intimate with arithmetic (for a change). It always surprises me how many people seem to have trouble doing this activity, just because they don’t understand addition and substraction (and percentages). Oh well! I’m not going to worry about it.
in the end, like a lot of other people, I filed my taxes at the last minute. I wonder what the statistic of us, last minute filers, really is; as well as the reasons why.
You must be an ingenious secretary.
I would always start months in advance, and I really did need weeks of concentration and refinements of the documents given the legal jungle that the tax laws – and also various international treaties etc. – represent.
Still, I got audited twice just in the last 2 years, several years after I left the U.S. – which was probably not a coincidence. They haven’t found anything substantial but they just returned to remind me of their existence and power. The IRS is a criminal organization.
Hi Lubos:
Just because I filed at the last minute does not mean that I didn’t work on the taxes before. I’ve also found that the tax software has improved substantially and that I spend less time on my taxes than I used to.
I’d like to point out that the U.S. Postal Service is a private company with a government mandated monopoly on your mailbox. It receives zero tax dollars, but is highly government regulated to ensure costs are kept down. They are funded by your postage and nothing else.
Don’t worry though, no one really knows this stuff.
http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/postalfacts.htm
From their 2009 stats: “0 — tax dollars received for operating the Postal Service”
Hi Nick:
Not to be picky, but who owns the post office? It is a company whose sole proprietor is the US Government. The executive branch office to be precise.
It is a self-sufficient enterprise (for the time being) and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see that it has to be subsidized in the future, seeing as the regulations that keep the prices down make it unable to react to certain kinds of changes in the market.
Beyond the post office correction, I’d like to point out a few other if not errors, then poorly chosen examples.
First, 4/15 is the date for paying your federal and (if applicable) state taxes. While it is true that some funds for education come from the federal and state govt., the majority of what most consider education expense (k-12) is paid for at the local level via property tax, not income taxes.
Social Security is not paid for (yet) by the federal government and is in fact paid for (or more correctly into) by individuals each paycheck via FICA withholdings. The same is, at least in part, true for Medicare though that program has been expanded.
And while some road work is paid for by transfer payments from the federal/state govts, individuals also pay tolls on major roadways and local municipalities are typically responsible for the maintenance of their own roadways.
Yes, its good to know how much you pay in Federal/State income tax, FICA, Medicare, local property taxes and sales taxes. Also good to know how they are spent.