It is amazing how stressful tax season can be, even when you don’t have much to declare. The Beatles song kept streaming in my head, it really wasn’t a big deal since we had really nothing to write home about, but while the man was silently punching in numbers and his eyebrows would move and he would adjust his glasses, he was making me nervous. It is irrational, I know but the ominous, insidious unchecked power and authority of the I.R.S and the potential threat of a random audit is enough to make me anxious while the man is crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s.
The title of this post is misleading, since we have been existing on savings for the past two years and also streamlining our worldly possessions, the tax man won’t taketh, he will refundeth. The whole exercise is one made stressful with deductions, which ones to take, which ones that you can’t, itemized versus standard deductions. The whole tax code is complicated and makes itself complicated, I think, so that an industry could be born to deal with the complexities and loopholes of the tax code.
I had to laugh because during the past few weeks, Romney has been in the news because when he produced his tax returns, the public got to see that his income, which isn’t considered earned income, it is carried interest from investments in his portfolio is taxed at 14% whereas earned income is taxed at 35% when we are talking about his income bracket which numbers in the 200 million. So essentially he had to pay 14% on “income” of 200 million or the same percentage as people who have earned income in the 70,000. bracket. It has been a slight bone of contention in the political discussion. The reason I had to laugh was because the last pieces of tax documents that I gave the tax man were the earned interest of our bank accounts. Sad to say, it was nowhere near the 200 million dollar mark, the earned interest that we presented for our taxes were in the $4.00 to $5.00 range. Pitiful, I know but what can you do.
Anyway, hooray, our taxes are done and I have all the information that I need to fill out the yearly FAFSA report to see how we qualify for financial aid for the baby girl’s college bill this coming September. She has a merit based grant already in the works so we will see how much more help we can get. Fingers crossed.
laurieanichols 