I paid a lot of taxes this year. It would not surprise me to see the patriots lining up in Boston...not to play football but rather to dump some tea into the harbor. My home state has been particularly demanding this year. I have paid them an awful lot this past year, but in the words of Mr. Burns...they would trade it all for a little more.
During Spring Break we took our usual vacation to the tax preparers office and were rapidly dispossesed of our nest egg. As a matter of fact, I believe they took most of the nest and left us with one little twig. We returned from our "vacation" feeling much less wealthy. Then, a week later, we received a letter from our state tax people. Apparently they wanted the twig as well.
We received a bill for 43 dollars, which thanks to the current economy is what a twig is going for. I wondered for a second if we had made another mistake on our taxes...but no, we leave that to the professionals now. What we discovered was that we had not paid our taxes quickly enough for our state. Through the year our employer had been dutifully removing large portions of our paychecks to hand over to our state government.
We had a spirited discussion about how to prevent this in the future. My wife said we should pay a quarterly tax like the self employed. I said that we should just get more taken out each pay period from our employer. As usual, I was right...which just aggravates that lovely lady. It was a less than amicable meal after that episode I tell you what!
For once we did our taxes without cheating...just felt like saying that. We really have never intentionally cheated on our taxes. All of you good readers who we claim as dependents can trust my word on that! But...mistakes have been made. Transgressions of ignorance I like to call them. Just like I like to call tax workers ignorant transgressors. I think that might even be biblical.
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| Our state's favorite Bible quote |
During Spring Break we took our usual vacation to the tax preparers office and were rapidly dispossesed of our nest egg. As a matter of fact, I believe they took most of the nest and left us with one little twig. We returned from our "vacation" feeling much less wealthy. Then, a week later, we received a letter from our state tax people. Apparently they wanted the twig as well.
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| Uh...you still have a penny |
We received a bill for 43 dollars, which thanks to the current economy is what a twig is going for. I wondered for a second if we had made another mistake on our taxes...but no, we leave that to the professionals now. What we discovered was that we had not paid our taxes quickly enough for our state. Through the year our employer had been dutifully removing large portions of our paychecks to hand over to our state government.
But there it was...a bill for 43 dollars. Apparently the state has a law that says that if you end up paying in more than 10% of your state taxes when you are ravaged each tax season then they are entitled to a penalty. Somehow we ended up owing 22%...and we paid it...way before April 15 I must admit. So the greedy bas...sorry, got to clean this up a bit...they demanded more. A $43 penalty.
We had a spirited discussion about how to prevent this in the future. My wife said we should pay a quarterly tax like the self employed. I said that we should just get more taken out each pay period from our employer. As usual, I was right...which just aggravates that lovely lady. It was a less than amicable meal after that episode I tell you what!
Finally, after a lot of sould searching, we came to the conclusion that if we are going to have an argument...I mean a spirited discussion...that there should be a 50 dollar minimum...72 dollars if we are in Canada.
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