Filing taxes and falling asleep
Did you do your taxes this year? If you answered "no," be thankful that you put it off for one more year. If your answer is "yes," please, accept my heartfelt condolences for having had to waste hours of your life.
Just a quick poll, how many of you who answered "yes" wanted to shred, rip, burn, smash, or otherwise mutilate any and all papers related to taxes when you were done? I did after about 5 minutes of working on my taxes, and 3 hours later it had only gotten worse. Honestly, who came up with our tax system? Are our representatives completely inane? I'm getting angry just thinking about it.
Maybe I just have no patience, but when the directions are more confusing than any multivariable calculus test I've ever taken, I get a little fed up. I'd like to hear the thought process our representatives have when they create the tax code. I can only take the "add line 62 to line 68, if that is more than line 43, subtract line 78, if it is less than line 23, add line 87, if it is neither or both of those, add all lines together and write down your answer on line 98" for so long.
That's not the worst part. Thank you, Mom, for helping me through my taxes every year: I'll be coming back for many more years to come, if you're willing to put up with my incessant questions and desire to beat some sense into whoever came up with the tax code. If she didn't help me, I would never have gotten it done, and someone would DIE. (This is a joke, although it sometimes describes how I feel). Every five minutes I had to call her down to the computer and ask her what the heck TurboTax was asking me about.
TurboTax makes it so much easier to file your taxes, but it's still ridiculously complicated. Do our taxes really need to have a special form for every conceivable thing? Or is that way only because over the years all of the special interest groups have gotten things added to save them money?
Remember, I'm a single college student with one job, a savings account, and a couple of stocks my grandma gave me when I was born. How complicated should my taxes be?
I think it should be a law that you have to do your own taxes: I am positive that our representatives don't do theirs. If they did, the first thing on the agenda for the next legislative session would be changing the tax system.
I haven't done enough research into it, but a flat sales tax seems like an easy way to go in an effort to change things. I believe 26% was what someone was suggesting when I heard about it. Before you just dismiss it, think about how much easier it would be. People who make more money pay a higher percent of their income in the current system. But the extremely rich and large corporations have their own lobbyists and lawyers who ensure that they pay as little as possible, so it's really you and me that are getting the short end of the deal.
With a straight sales tax, if you spend more, you pay more, and how many loopholes could there be? It is totally fair as well. If I buy more than you, I pay more tax than you. It's as simple as that. Say you and I make the same amount. I spend it now, you save it for later. Eventually, you will spend your money, and it will be taxed then, while I'm taxed now. It makes sense to me, we both pay the same amount, just at different times, while someone who makes less, buys less, and pays less, and someone who makes more, buys more and pays more. It doesn't get much easier than that.
A flat tax is one potential solution to the convoluted tax system we have now. Something needs to change: The law is only beneficial if people can understand the law. The current tax code is frustrating, and nearly impossible to comprehend-even for a single college student's taxes-without the help of a computer program and/or an attorney! If our legislators are unwilling to come up with a better system, let's put our heads together as citizens and vote in someone new who can.
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