Greetings Taxpayers!
It's that time again! This is the time in the U.S. when we
are all busy doing our taxes. They are due this Wednesday (the
15th) and so many of us are suffering from taxic shock syndrome.
You feel like you're working for the government, but without the
benefits. I heard a definition once that "taxes are the price we
pay for living in a civilized society." My only argument with
that is that for the price, we ought to be much more civilized by
now! Maybe we could put up with a little less civilization, if
it was cheaper. Now, whether you pay up without complain or
consider the tax folks to be just another branch of organized
crime, you still have to pay up. Things could be worse --
imagine if your refund check from the government bounced!
The biggest problem with the government tax folks is that
they have absolutely no sense of humor. If these people had been
around to see Cinderella's fairy godmother turn a pumpkin into a
coach, they would see it only as a conversion of straight income
to capital gains. No matter whether you pay your taxes with
several tons of pennies, send them a check welded onto a 300
pound steel plate, fill out all of your quarterly schedules
according to the Julian calendar or fill out you tax forms using
only Roman numerals, you can guaranty that you'll be in trouble
for not following the rules. And trouble to those government
accounting types pretty much always means it'll cost you money!
Taxes and penalties will be due... As usual.
The first Thank You this week has to be to my mother, Donna
Becwar, who is the family tax consultant. She has forgotten more
about Schedule 1040 than I will ever learn. Thanks also to our
contributors and friends: Helen Yee, Jerry Taff, Laura Hong Li,
Libin He, John Adler, Paul Roser, Timothy McChain, Nancy Wohlge,
Ellen Peterson, Caterina Sukup and Carol Becwar - taxpayers all.
O.K., gang - And when you get stuck, remember that the I.R.S. is
at:http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/prod/cover.html
Have a Great Week (Once your taxes are mailed off)!
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
DEAD AGAIN?
----------
Before we get on to the taxes, one bit of old business.
Last week on Funnies, we covered scams. Well, here's one more
for the list: having yourself declared dead now and again to
avoid the law.
Peter Gentry of Maryland was arrested in 1991 on drunk-
driving charges. But before he could appear in court, the
northern Virginia authorities received a copy of a death
certificate that said Gentry had died in a car crash in Los
Angeles.
Skip forward a few years to 1995, when authorities in
Baltimore County, Maryland arrested Gentry on drunk-driving
charges. They got a death certificate stating that Gentry had
died of ebola in Zimbabwe.
Random chance led the authorities in both places to compare
notes, and Gentry was picked up, still very much alive. Gentry
faces ten years in prison if convicted on forgery charges, far
more than he would have got if simply convicted of driving drunk.
He's due back in court May 5th to set a date for his trial on the
forgery charges. Unless he dies again, of course. (Reuters)
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
IRS MOTTO- "We've got what it takes to get what you've got.
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
"Enter your unrecaptured Section 1250 gain, if any (see
page D-4). "Figure the tax on the amount on Line 32.
Use the Tax Table or the Tax Rate Schedules, whichever
applies."
- Part of the new 54 line instruction for
IRS Form 1040DIV.
[ Probably easier to just use you shoe size
multiplied by the number of years you've
owned you VCR divided by pi. ]
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
MAYBE HE DID MEET ONE MAN HE DIDN'T LIKE AFTER ALL...
--------------------------------------------------
American comedian Will Rogers paid too much income tax one
year, then tried in vain to claim a refund of the amount he'd
overpaid. Though he wrote numerous letters the government never
answered. Eventually the form for the next year's return
arrived. In the section marked "DEDUCTIONS," Rogers listed: "Bad
debt, US Government -- $40,000."
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
KEEPING ABREAST OF CHANGES IN TAX LAW...
-------------------------------------
The tax code allows deductions for business expenses only as
long as the items purchased for the job are not for everyday use.
Exotic dancer Cynthia Hess (who uses the professional name Chesty
Love) argued successfully a few years ago that a $2,088
depreciation on her size 56FF breast implants (142FF for you
metric folks) should be a deductible business expense.
The judge found that the implants had indeed increased Hess'
business income and that appear they "freakish", so they were not
useful in everyday life. (Miami Herald)
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
SO, JUST WHAT WAS IT THEY SPENT ALL THAT MONEY ON?
--------------------------------------------------
By any measure, the U.S. government is a huge business; they
spend more on paper clips than most large businesses gross in
sales. So there are likely to be some things that slip through
the cracks, just like any business. But when you operate in
multiple trillions of dollars, the cracks get to be Grand Canyon
sized. Here are a few of the stranger transactions in the U. S.
Federal budget (and a few local items, too):
- $90,000 in fines assessed by OSHA (the Occupational Safety
and Health Administration) against the Federal Building in
Kansas City, Missouri for failing to comply with OSHA
Regulations. Among the offices affected was the OSHA
Regional Headquarters.
- $130 million for the annual expense of buying and storing
helium, a project which has been going on since 1929. The
intent of the program was to provide adequate supplies of
helium for zeppelins in time of war. No one seems to be
quite sure what the stockpile is for now.
- $512 million on the Bureau of Indian Affairs yearly
inventory sheet. The items listed under this amount where
three chain saws, a television set and two typewriters.
- $84,000 for a study to determine why people fall in love.
- $230,000 spent by the National Park Service to buy 1/2 acre
of land in the southwest part of Washington, D.C. Two years
later the Park Service discovered it had already owned the
land, having purchased it in 1914.
- $400,000 was added to an agricultural bill to study the Maui
algal bloom crisis. This would make much more sense if
there was a Maui algal bloom crisis.
- $200,000 allocated to a NASA program to develop a sweet
potato that can be grown in space ships.
[ Spudnik? ]
- Amount efficiency experts save the Department of Defense
each year: up to $136 million. Amount efficiency experts
cost the Department of Defense each year: up to $300
million.
- $1 million in the federal budget to preserve a historic
sewer in Trenton, New Jersey. The brick-lined sewer is 25
feet (8 meters) underground and has had only two visitors in
the last 23 years.
- Think it's easy to buy for the government? Compare the
prices that defense contractors charged for some common
items:
PRODUCT PRICE GOVERNMENT PRICE
-----------------------------------------------------
Office Stapler $4.59 $54.00
Needle-nose Pliers $6.79 $999.20
10ft (3m) Ladder $35.00 $1,676.00
Quality Fax Machine $350.00 $547,000
- $1,214,000 for potato research (1996 Federal Budget) - a
total of $13,010,000 since 1983.
[ For that amount, we should have
self-peeling potatoes with zippers. ]
- $193 million spent each year on military bands - $172
million more than spent on all arts education, kindergarten
through high school, and $25 million more than the yearly
budget for the National Endowment for the Arts.
- $19 million to study the amount of methane emitted by cows.
[ MOOOO... Burp! ]
- $600,000 to study how waterfowl were affected by the Exxon
Valdez tanker spill. The study involved taking perfectly
healthy birds, dipping them in crude oil and throwing them
in the Pacific.
- Gold (pure): $4,620 per pound. B-2 Bomber (US Air Force):
$15,714 per pound -- a total of $2.2 billion each for the
160,000 pound airplanes.
- $112,000 allocated by the El Paso, Texas City Council to pay
a private security firm to guard a local government building
-- the El Paso Police Station.
- $46,000 spent by the United States Department of Agriculture
to determine how long it takes to cook eggs.
[ Uh... Three minutes? ]
- A total of $37.5 million for military construction of a Navy
chapel in San Diego, an Army classroom building near
Chicago, a Navy dining hall in Orlando, an Air Force fire
station in Indianapolis and modernizing the power plant at
the Philadelphia naval yard. All of these would be wise
investments, if they weren't all being built at bases that
are being permanently closed.
- $105,163 in grant money to study the "Evolution of Monogamy
in Biparental Rodents."
[ I knew I smelled a rat! ]
- $38,174 spent by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
in a Vermont study to determine if runoff from stacks of cow
manure pollutes nearby streams and ponds. It does.
- $20,000 paid by the EPA to an outside contractor to produce
a report answering Congressional criticism that the agency
uses too many outside contractors.
- $37,000 paid to contractors to paint rocks along newly
constructed segments of Federal Scenic Highways to make them
look "older."
- $57,000 to the Executive branch for custom, gold-embossed
playing cards used on Air Force Two (the vice president's
plane).
- $180,000 spent by the Illinois Department of Conservation to
study owl vomit.
- $160,000 allocated to the National Institute of Neurological
and Communicative Disorders to study if you can cast a spell
on someone by drawing an X on their chest. Answer: no.
- $27,000 spent by the Law Enforcement Assistance
Administration to study why prisoners want to escape from
jail.
- $168,915 (almost $4 per copy) spent to print a government
publication at the Government Printing Office, nearly four
times as much as it would have cost if printed commercially.
The reason for the high price tag? Besides the fact that
the GPO is generally more expensive than commercial
printers, the book was a rush job, printed over the Labor
Day holiday weekend in multiple colors and used top quality
materials and bindings. The title of this urgently needed
book? "Creating a Government That Works Better and Costs
Less," by Vice President Al Gore.
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
PAYMENT DUE UPON RECEIPT...
------------------------
The owners of a small antiques store in Vacaville,
California got a surprise from the government. Ken and Judy Reed
did not get the $175 refund they had been expecting. Instead
they got a letter saying that the refund would be applied to
their outstanding balance of tax owed.
Leaving a debt of just $300,000,082.17.
An IRS spokesperson says that "it's a pretty rare event when
someone gets a notice like that." The government has yet to
agree that the tax bill is not valid.
Meanwhile, antiques dealer Reed has offered to pay the IRS
an extra $2 a week toward paying off the debt, meaning he'll be
free and clear in just under 3 million years. (AP)
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
DEATH AND TAXES...
---------------
The little town of Colma, California had a problem. The
little town had a population of only around 1,000 in it's 2
square miles. Most of the town's area -- about three-quarters of
the total area -- is a huge cemetery in which over a million
people are buried. Two years ago, a guy named Robert Simcox
announced a ballot referendum to tax gravesites at $5 per grave
each year.
[ If you didn't pay, would you have a grave
problem? ]
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
© 1998 by Bill Becwar. All Rights Reserved.
![[ BACK]](btn_rwdr.gif){kind=small}
![[NEXT]](btn_fwdr.gif){kind=small}