Tax Day

Well, tax day is upon us. I filed electronically and mailed in my signature form for the federal tonight. I was not in any hurry to get them done because I knew I would owe money because of freelance work I did this past year. I was right - about $300 total. How convenient, huh? They might as well just keep my "stimulus" money and lets call it even.

I'm one of those people who doesn't really mind paying taxes. In fact, if I could have more services - like real health care - I wouldn't mind paying more in taxes. You know, the people in Denmark are the happiest on the planet and they pay about 50% in taxes. But, their education, health care, and a host of other things are paid for. They also don't have their fingers in lots of military pies.

When I pay taxes I like to think that ALL of my tax money goes for things I want to support. MY money is going for things like roads and libraries and schools... and none of it is going to build bombs. OTHER people's money is building bombs.

I've long had this idea that we should get to decide where some portion of our tax money goes. Just like they have all those check off boxes for the presidential campaign and such, we should have boxes for other things. You could check off if, say, 10% of your mony should go to schools or libraries or whatever. It would be some indication of what the American people wanted. Wouldn't it? Seems to me like it would tell our government something about how we want our money spent. I suppose that doesn't matter to anyone except us. There's a flaw in every plan, I guess.

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