Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Yes, the taxman cometh. Given that there hasn’t been any connection between federal income and outlays for years; that deficit spending has reached staggeringly obscene levels; and that Uncle just prints his own funny-money anyway, Ol’ Robbo can only conclude that the sole remaining function of the income tax is punitive. It’s simply a stick with which to beat the middle-class kulaks and to remind us who’s in charge.
Hmmph! As you might gather, Ol’ Robbo got whanged pretty durn hard this year.
One particularly irksome aspect of it: Mrs. R has been working a tutoring side-gig this year to help us get over the final hurdle of the Gels’ educational expenses. She’s quite a popular teacher and has been much in demand. Back in the day, this would have been a strictly cash biznay, and Ol’ Robbo would not have hesitated for an instant to accidentally-on purpose forget to report it on his returns. Now? It’s all electronic transfers with their attendant fingerprints. (Plus, it doesn’t help that one of Mrs. R’s clients is somewhere fairly high up in the IRS bureaucracy.) So I durnst risk the memory loss. The result? Not only does that extra income get zapped at the highest rate, Mrs. R also has to pay self-employment taxes on it! When all the smoke cleared, we realized it really isn’t worth it for her to expend all that extra time and effort for so little additional gain. Thanks, Uncle!
*** I still believe this is their best album. Funny, Ol’ Robbo never thought he’d live to see a downright backlash against the Beatles, but it seems to have become fashionable of late to pooh-pooh them and everything they achieved. You kids can get off my lawn, now.
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April 15, 2024 at 8:26 am
profmondo
I concur with you regarding both Revolver and the tax stuff. In the years in which I sell stories, the hassle of filing Schedule C pretty much obliterates the income.
April 15, 2024 at 10:55 am
sleepybeth
I’ve started paying quarterly estimates on my little side hustle to make the end of the year less of a PITA. This year, I managed to overpay that, so now we get a refund.
But yes, taxation is theft.
April 15, 2024 at 4:38 pm
Robbo
Yeah, I’m giving in and going with the quarterlies, too, as much as I hate the idea.
It also occurs to me that this rant is prolly going to get me audited this year!
April 16, 2024 at 12:33 pm
rbj1
/You were just kidding about the lack of memory thing. And in the WEF’s Great Reset, individual initiative and working for yourself shall be at least discouraged, if not verboten. Early withdrawals from retirement means the taxman gets his share up front. I hate VBA’s all electronic filing, it’s four times longer than I can do the 1040 in paper.
/I, for one, still love the Beatles
Nice sharp, short thunderstorm last night, rinsed away a lot of the pollen.
April 16, 2024 at 1:27 pm
Robbo
Those storms came through here around lunchtime – I had to cut short my walk because it started looking ominous and rumbling. Pulled up the radar and it looked like we would get bull’s-eyed by one cell, but it jigged at the last second and only clipped us. Five minutes of rain, tops. Mrs. R said they got hail over at her school.
Pollen is still very much a part of my life today.