Thursday, April 15, 2010

Happy Tax Day!

Unless you've been living under a rock lately you've probably heard of the Tea Party movement. It will come as no surprise to most people reading this that I strongly disagree with them. That said, it can definitely be hard to explain to people why I don't mind paying taxes (which explains why you will never hear a politician say "Taxes aren't so bad.")

So with all that in mind, I adored this article about how and why a writer learned to love Tax Day.

Happy April 15!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

that was a great article! thanks for sharing :)

Becca said...

Ok I could rant about tea party-ers all day.

I may have.. (ok did).. got in a fight with a tea party-er with 2 kids the other day. He was saying how it was unfair that 50% of the public didn't pay taxes. I said that yeah, if you make under $50,000 and have a family of four, your child/dependent deductions means you have no tax liability. Of course, it also means if you make $100,000 and have a family of 4, you don't pay tax on the first $50,000 of that income as a result of those deductions (the case he was in). I told him if he was against people not paying taxes, the first thing he should try to do is eliminate those deductions. Of course, that would mean he would have to pay more in taxes. I said if he used the argument that every American should pay taxes relative to the amount of government services they receive (e.g. roads, national defense, etc.), his family of 4 should have 4 times the tax liability that I do singly, rather than a lower tax liability than I have like it is now. He got all flabbergasted. Tea partiers are weird, they think rich people should pay less taxes and poor people more, why is that? You ever met a rich person who was suffering do to lack of ability to by a fifth yacht?

Of course, the tea partier across the street told me if he had to buy health insurance for his employees he would shut down his business and lay off all 15 of them. He said people should be responsible for paying their own health bills. I asked him if he paid his employees enough to pay for their own health bills. He told me that they are all lazy and would be able to pay their health bills if they found a better job than working for him. Yes, seriously. He also told me that he thinks 40% of doctors will stop practicing - he couldn't tell me what he thought they would do for a living instead. I guess unemployment is better than accepting the possibility of slightly lower wages?