Rid of the Taxman

Dearest Rachel –

This should probably be a letter for another two months from now, but it’s at the top of my mind at the moment, so I think I’ll tell you about it today. If nothing else, I’ve been having to do more about it over the last couple of days, so while there’s no filing it until April (because, as Dad has always insisted, if you have to pay, why waste the extra time you could otherwise be collecting interest or dividends by continuing to have the money in your possession? Which makes perfect sense), it does represent what’s been going on in my life lately – and isn’t that the whole point of these letters, at this juncture?

In any event, what with January come and gone, it’s time for all the various places from which and to which my money comes and goes to let me in on the specifics of the past year’s activity. Unlike my dad, I don’t bother to keep the receipts (even though I do record my expenditures as I go along through life, as you might have noticed and even teased me about back in the day – I never did get around to an analysis of the frequency that we would patronize various restaurants, did I?); that’s for the organizations that are required to comply with this sort of bureaucratic rigmarole, they’ll let me know in due time. Well, that due time has arrived, and I have to gather it all and assemble it to send to our preparation team.

I say “our,” of course, because Daniel, despite living under the same roof as myself, is an independent individual, filing separately from me. He gets his own 1099s and makes his own charitable contributions that can be deducted from the income reported on those 1099s. At the same time, I still consider it my responsibility to assemble his documentation and send it off as well as mine, since there’s no need to duplicate the effort.

Which is not to say that he’s uninvolved in the process; on the contrary, I literally can’t access any of his documents without his accessing the sites where they come from. Like I said, everything of his is separate from mine these days, especially since your estate has been settled. He has his own bank and investment accounts, each with their own passwords and so forth. I have to have him access them, and request the necessary tax forms from each of them in their turn, so until the step where I send them off to our tax preparers, he’s involved in each step along the way.

That doesn’t mean that he wants any part of it, any more than any other tax-paying American. As with too many of our fiscal outlays, we do this not so much out of patriotic pride, or even a satisfied sense of “well, the more we pay in taxes is an indication of how much more we’ve made this past year” that used to be the ethos of the company I worked at for nearly thirty years (and while I actually understand that attitude, it surprises me to think that an astute businessman like the one that founded the company would have so much blind faith in his government to spend it wisely and efficiently – or at least, more so than he himself could do. One more proof of the difference between Japan and the U.S., I suppose) as much in fear of the penalties that we might be subject to if we don’t.

Moreover, he’s been following the news even more intently than I have; you’ll recall that parenthetical remark about spending money “wisely and efficiently”? Yeah, it seems that ours hasn’t been doing much of that lately (or ever, most likely). I know, you’re shocked. Billions – even trillions, once you tally everything up – of dollars being poured down this or that rat hole are being found all over the globe, and supposedly, the team finding it all have vowed to put a stop to it. Now, I don’t know how much it all comes to – and neither do they, as they’re evidently still digging and still finding more – but if we’re wasting money at this astronomical rate, it might be that, by putting it all to a complete end might eliminate our national debt – considered by many to be utterly insurmountable – in a matter of a decade or so; and without necessarily resorting to the sort of austerity measures that some countries have, to their pain (apart from the firing of federal workers who do little but metaphorically shovel these funds into a figurative bonfire – which would save that much more money).

Of course, as he’s reading this, Daniel gets out over his skis in a hurry; while we’re going over his paperwork to send to our preparers, and from there to the IRS, he asked me what would happen if the agency was abolished before April.

I have to chuckle at his optimism. Seriously, kiddo? This was like the time when he and you were convinced that the Pope was to be arrested and extradited on child sex abuse matters. I had you look up the article that suggested it, and poked enough holes in it that his Swiss Guards would mistake it for cheese. This isn’t going to happen, and even if it did, we’d probably still be on the hook for state taxes, since Illinois isn’t likely to follow suit if the feds abolished it; indeed, they would probably ramp up their rates, since that would leave their citizens with more cash in their pockets for them to tax.

Still, I pointed out, as gently as I could, that it was a non-issue; if nothing else, we still had to file for last year, since the agency still existed through the entirety of it. This settled him for the time being – it was a sensible-sounding answer, in any event – but I’m not sure he’s giving up on that dream. Nor should he; while I don’t think it’s ever going to happen, regardless of the chatter making the rounds, one should always hold out hope that things can improve. After all, it’s not as if our current arrangement has existed since our nation was founded; indeed, the system we have has only been in place for eleven decades or so. So why shouldn’t such an onerous means of raising revenue go away, especially if it leads to government spending such funds so injudiciously? Best to trim that fat away, and let us individuals use our money as we see fit – we might be able to do a better job than Uncle Sam.

Sure, there are some necessary things that governments do that private industry can’t – or won’t, since there’s no profit in it – but I’m looking forward to seeing the many unnecessary things eliminated. After a lifetime of being told that we’re in such dire fiscal straits as a nation, it would be interesting to see if that would still be the case after all the fat was pared away. Maybe we can get rid of the taxman, some glorious day.

Or maybe I’ll have to wait until I’m over there with you. Either way, honey, keep an eye on us in the meantime, and wish us luck. We’re going to need it.