Today is tax day. I filed my taxes some weeks ago, all online. My tax filing is simple and straightforward. I don't itemize. I don't think I have enough deductions to make it useful, and I don't care very much. The few times I have looked at possible deductions, I have found that the standard deduction for federal taxes was more than my list of deductions. It is possible that I don't know the tax rules well enough to take full advantage of deductions to which we are entitled. If that is true, then the tax system to more complex than it should be, because I have a decent education and functioning mind, and I can handle math pretty well, so if the tax system is too complex for me, it is too complex for the average wage-earner.
I had to pay some taxes. We owed a few hundred dollars in federal income tax. That happens most years, because we don't have a lot of deductions, and my wife and I both earn money. Withholding is calculated based on earnings, but does not include adjustment for a two-earner household. I could, if I wanted to make the effort, add more withholding so we would not owe money each year. After all, I don't do much with the money I end up paying in income taxes, so I don't get a lot of value out of it before sending it in. Each year, I think maybe it would be worthwhile to fill out a new W4, but I'm easily distracted, and I never have, since I started working at my current job. I've been at this job nine years, which is my longest tenure in one job so far. Maybe it is time to review the tax documents I filed when I was hired. My situation has changed some in nine years.
Filing state taxes in Ohio, where I live, is pretty easy, since we don't have complex financial dealings. It's online, and based on the federal tax form. Just a few more questions, and done. Local taxes, we also end up owing a little, because each jurisdiction has its own tax rate. Where I live, the local income tax is 2.5%, but where I work, it is only 2%. For my wife, both are at 2.5%, so she doesn't owe any extra, but I have to pay 0.5% taxes beyond the withholding. I get a bill once a quarter, telling me to pay in advance, which I do, so at tax time, I have to pay one quarter of 0.5% of my annual income in local taxes. We can manage that.
So, do the data gods know all of my tax secrets? Who knows, besides me and my wife, how much money we make, and how much we pay in taxes? It happens that, since my birthday is in July, I also get notice each April that I should review my Social Security account, which I usually do. I look at the numbers, think about whether SS will still be paying full benefits at projected levels when I retire, and how much my wife and I will need to live on by then. I think SS sends out those notices three months before everyone's birthday. Do the data gods check on those numbers, too?
I don't know anything about our national embarrassment's taxes, because despite his promises he won't release his tax returns. He doesn't seem to know that the tradition of candidates and presidents, along with other elected officials, releasing their tax information came about because a president was caught cheating on his taxes. Then, he quite famously and ironically said, "I am not a crook." I guess he hadn't read the reports or his own tax returns. The current incumbent seems to be a crook, in a small and pathetic way, using his position to send government money into his family businesses. Sure, it's only a few million dollars, so far, but it still seems grossly unethical and disgusting. I find it sad that his supporters don't seem to notice how bad that looks to everyone with any sense of right and wrong.
Do the data gods know about his taxes? Can they inadvertently cause them to be revealed, just for fun? I have my doubts about that. Data gods might be capable of independent action, eventually, and may even become self-aware in some sense, but I don't see much point in their programming themselves to experience emotion. Why add that kind of chaos to an already complex system? But leaking Trump's taxes could provide fun for us lowly humans. Would that it could be.
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