theholtsite

Ok, I’m officially sick of taxes. It seems like everything is taxed. I just spent about four hours doing our tax “return”, which wasn’t a return at all. It cost us over $2,000 on top of the already hefty deductions Jill had taken out of her paychecks.

I am honest on my taxes because I believe that’s what God wants me to do. But sometimes I get angry at the plethora of taxes we pay. Here’s what Jill and I (and you) pay… a partial list, I’m sure there’s more:

-Federal income tax
-State income tax
-Sales tax
-Use tax (you pay tax in MA on almost anything bought out of state)
-Excise tax
-Property tax
-Gas tax
-Capital gains/dividend tax
-Highway tolls
-Cigarette tax (fortunately not applicable to us)

This is nuts. Americans didn’t pay ANY federal income tax until 1861. And now we’re taxed on everything. Maybe we’re not supposed to notice since it’s a little at a time from lots of different sources. But that makes me notice it MORE.

And then there’s the filing of taxes – you fill them out as best you can and then four years later get a nice IRS letter saying you owe $2,000 extra dollars PLUS INTEREST. How is that fair? This has happened to us a few times. I’m self-employed, so I seem to pay about 25% just for income tax.

I’ll show them. I just won’t make any money. They can’t take what I don’t have! The more you make, the more you get taxed, thanks to graduated taxation. I’ll just be a bum. Thanks, Uncle Sam.

And yes, we do have a great country… nice roads, powerful armed forces, decent public education (depending on where you are). But there’s so much waste too.

I’m not against taxes… I’m against excessive tax that goes to things that we shouldn’t be paying for.