Tax Week

Tax Week

So I've seen a lot of people angry about their taxes this week. I'm not very happy about mine, either. I haven't done the math, but I'll bet it's not that different from this:



The Geek with a .45 is in a foul mood about the whole thing (his response to Michelle Obama is too rude to reprint). He's sharing Rachel Lucas' pain about it (actually, since she paid eleven grand and he paid almost FIFTY GRAND, she and I really have little to complain about by comparison).

I also pay what Lucas calls "the Extra Special Just For Those Who Don’t Work For Someone Else Tax." The fully-15%-of-everything-you-brought-in "self-employment" tax really is painful, because you pay it on income before you get to take your deductions, exemptions, credits, etc. And then, the government charges you income taxes on half of it again, as if you'd ever seen it instead of just sending it straight to them.

So, in other words, the government takes 15% of your income off the top as a "special tax"; and then it charges you income tax NOT on the 85% that is left, but on 92.5% of that original sum. That 7.5% you never had, because you sent it straight to Uncle Sam, you pay income taxes on that too.

That's the sort of thing that will make a man, oh, what's the word? "Bitter."

There are three kinds of Americans: those who are paying the freight, those who are not paying the freight, and those who are so rich that they can't tell the difference. Michelle Obama appears to belong to the last category.