It will be a great day when our schools
have all the money they need
and the Armed Forces
have to hold a bake sale to buy a tank.
- Seen on a bumper sticker
have all the money they need
and the Armed Forces
have to hold a bake sale to buy a tank.
- Seen on a bumper sticker
It's that time of year again. Every evening, I check the mailbox to see if today is the day my Double-You-Twos have arrived from the Eye.Are.Ess. Time to pick up the phone and call my tax guy to set an appointment and have him work his little miracles.
I'd like to propose a change to the tax laws, if I may. I'm not even going to get started on whether I think President Bush's tax cuts should be made permanent (no), because I have more important, groundbreaking stuff to propose here and discussing the former is just a distraction.Here's what I'd like to propose: check boxes for where I'd like my tax dollars to go.
I've made a revised form for you, so it should be easy enough. Just click on the graphic to the left and the form should open in a new window.
Good luck!
P.S. Email me if you want it in an Adobe PDF file. Damn Blogger! Won't let you post PDFs, unless I'm missing something...
5 comments:
Okay... truly! I laughed so hard on this one, I peed a little. Thank you for starting my day off just right!
xoxox
Abgue
This is awesome. Seriously, brilliant. And on a sociological level, I am curious to find out what the result would be. Would everyone in the country check the same basic things like education, or would it turn out that our interests and priorities are varied enough that every department would end up with funding?
Makes sense to me, which is a break-through compared to my :quote: understanding :unquote: of the tax laws.
I heard the other day that the current confusing tax laws will not be abolished because thousands of IRS personnel and income tax accountants would suddenly find themselves out of a job. I suspect there is a lobby group somewhere that is advocating for keeping the status fucking quo.
- Phoebe
Brilliant form, now I know why you don't work for the government.
But gosh if you did, it could really ad some sass and spunk to the system. And intelligence, but yeah, they've banned smart people and only want the paranoid.
Abgue: I think you can claim incontinence products on your tax return. :-)
Jess: Thank you! It would be interesting to see where taxpayers designated their dollars and how that would break out state-by-state. I suspect there would be states that would lean red (high on defense allocations, low on education and arts) and those that would lean blue (high on social services, low on defense.)
I should have added a check box that said, "I favor a 10% flat tax for everyone." Maybe that will be on next year's form, depending on who our new president is.
Phoebe: I thought it was pretty "sensical" too! Even more powerful than the tax lobby are the lobbies that benefit from our tax dollars, especially Defense, Intelligence, Homeland Security, FDA, Commerce, and Transportation. Really, we shouldn't end income tax. We should ban lobbying and enact campaign finance reform.
Cele: Someone actually suggested to me the other day that I should think about a job with the government because I can just keep my head down, do my work, and I can never be fired (unless I'm grossly insubordinate or embezzle the government. But then, that goes on every day, too, and the government is still the most bloated workforce in America.) Needless to say, I cringed. I think I'd rather have job uncertainty than lobotomized job security.
Having said that, there are a few rare examples of shining government employees. Emphasis on rare...
P.S. This reposting of my previous comments corrects an error in my comment to Phoebe. I meant to say, we shouldn't end income tax entirely. We should enact a flat tax for everyone and then, we should ban lobbying and enact campaign finance reform.
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