🐐April Goat Fool 15

Ugh, tax day already.

Sorry, I’ve been absent from posting for a few eight days.
I’ll pretend that it’s because I put off all that tax stuff for three months and now I’ve been rushing to get it finished.
But that’s half lie. I have continued to put off that tax stuff, and I have no particular excuse for not posting.

(Well, I’ve been working on rebooting my computer. Sane individuals among you may question how that could possibly take a week to complete, but I don’t have time for your silly questions. I’ve got paperwork to fill out.)

I wanted to post a friendly goatly reminder about tax day coming up. That was originally going to be a week ago… when a reminder might have been useful. But now it’s too late.

In the meantime, Felton10 started a thread about that which will be immensely more useful than mine.

Also, I don’t have anything particularly useful to say, so feel free to just look at the pictures and ignore the wordy parts.

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Tax Day

Not to be confused with Tax Freedom Day, which is apparently tomorrow. But that assumes you’re exactly average in every financial way, which you are not.
[insert cute meme of a cat or goat or something telling people they're better than average]

Our income tax system is… really weird. I don’t know how unique it is in the world (and I don’t feel like researching that right now), but it sure doesn’t match any other taxation system we have in this country. Sales tax is told to you at the time you’re checking out, and it’s very unlikely you would forget to pay it. Gasoline taxes are factored into the price at the pump, and it’s practically impossible to not pay them (farmers and maybe others might have some ways around it; I don’t remember). A bunch of other taxes are similar—you can’t “forget” to pay them.

Property tax is one you can forget to pay, which can cause problems, but there isn’t much guessing about it. The government sends you (or your mortgage company) a bill.

But the U.S. income tax somehow became a choose-your-own-adventure activity where mistakes can only work against you. The tax code is gargantuan, and more than any mortal can actually understand completely, but we’re probably stuck with it for as long as lobbyists are able to convince congress to maintain the complexity.

I have a bunch more rant that can go along with this, but the summary is:

This country’s income tax system is a royal mess every which way, but polite society expects us to go along with it, and to encourage your neighbors to do likewise.

(it might be hard to tell, but this picture depicts a goat that is “angry at the IRS”)

There isn’t much that any of us can individually do to fix the situation. Especially not today, since we all have to rush to e-file these suckas before midnight.

(btw, this is a depiction of a goat “shedding a tear for lost money”)