Just pay your taxes people!!

OK, I’ve kept silent on a few things long enough and just cannot bear this anymore. Pent up political posts are forthcoming, but this one is too ripe and must be addressed:

For gawds sake all you damn politicans anywhere on either side, would you please pay your flipping taxes?? Guys, I have been filing taxes for 25 years. For the first 5 I did pay H&R Block to do it. Then I figured out the forms and did them on my own for a couple. Then Turbox Tax cmae out and life was good! Now there are multiple programs out there to create your forms – I use Tax Act now and have for about 4 filing years. They are all flipping EASY. They ask the same questions that the folks at H&R Block or your CPA will ask. They key is in how you ANSWER the damn questions!! IOW – the truth will set you free and allow you to become HHS secretary 🙂

Now, in those 25 years of filings I’ve had all sorts of situations. Married, not married, head of household, unearned income, child care credit, rental properties, home businessess, estimated payments, 1099 income, capital gains, anyhow..lots! One year when I was still married to Ex2 we did have a prior source of income that we were unaware of come back to bite us. A w-2 for taxable portion of his part-time student worker hours never arrive and we had no idea that it would be reported. $500 worth of income turned into almost $500 of back taxes we owed after penalties and interest. Lesson learned. Now I have the tendency to report things even withou statements!!  Anyway, my point is, I am very small ripple in the tax pond, I am not a tax professional and yet I have been able to figure this all out AND be dilligent about reporting.

So how, for the love of the inevitable certainties of death and taxes, can these public officials who are all usually way more able to *pay* what they owe, all so awful at filing their taxes?? Do they really all use the shittiest CPA’s?? C’mon now. Flipping ridiculous.

Oh, and I particularly love how these things come up only now. Sure, it’s awesome that thanks to Obama appointing these people, the IRS has now recovered over $200k in back taxes. But come ON, if not for the appointments, were these things going to sty covered up forever? Ok, don’t answer that 😉

I know Obama wants a cleaner, more transparent government, but it’s nearly impossible to go from murky to squeaky clean as we can see. Way too many potentially qualified appointees have been living under the old, dirty rules and are going to crop up with these problems.  Especially the lobbying rule which had zero restrictions before. People took jobs with no clue that it would make it more difficult for them to work in government again.

OTOH, it’s not like this is the first administration to hit these tax issue speed bumps with nominees, so again, what the hell are you people thinking???

Death and taxes people. Death and taxes.

UPDATED to add this link to another post that says it all on this topic so perfectly (IMHO anyway).