Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Where does the money go exactly?

"The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has."

- Will Rogers (1879 - 1935)
Illiterate Digest (1924), "Helping the Girls with their Income Taxes"


Well, another year, another tax bill. And no, I do not wish to know how much your refund is; sour grapes on my part. I should be used to it by now. A refund coming my way has been such a rare occurrence that I can scarce remember that I did get one. Once, from the feds, many years ago and I think it was for about $15. I should have hung the check on the wall, marking the day permanently in my personal history, but I think that same year the state charged me $50 so it was a borrow from Peter to pay Paul year. But what does this have to do with gardening? Well, as the electronic packets were flying forth and back from my computer to the tax slurping server, all I could think about was this little corner of the garden. This is where I want to put in some retaining walls and fruit trees. And I was thinking for the amount of money I just sent to the government, I could have afforded the stones and materials to build this part of the garden and I would have been able to hire some help to build said walls.

But then they'd have to pay taxes, poor sod.

Well, I guess I'll just have to pull out my $7 hoe (taxes paid on it too) and keep the weeds down for a while longer.

1 comment:

ellipsisknits said...

My Dad (who works in finance) always told us it was better to have to pay taxes than to get a refund, since getting a refund is like giving the government an interest-free loan of that money, whereas having to pay means you've had more money sitting in your accounts all year earning interest for you.
Granted, on $50, it's not a heck of a lot of interest, but thinking of it that way does take a bit of the sting out.
-C
(I just found your blog. Looks great!)