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| Patrick Henry Protesting Stamp Act |
You know . . . I now fully understand how our Founders felt
when they were dealing with the unfair taxation, restriction of trade, and
violation of personal rights, privacy, and property George III imposed on them.
As a small business owner who’s simply trying to stay afloat when the money
coming in isn’t equal to the expenses going out and I find myself negatively
impacted every single day by the failed policies of a government I’m
increasingly coming to view as the enemy, I’m on the verge of agitating for a
new American Revolution.
Seriously.
I’m not smiling.
I had planned to do this post on how I use calendars to plot out
the action of my stories, and I’ll get to it eventually, but there’s something
more important weighing on my mind right now. Excuse me if I sound just a bit
radical.
It seems like every other month I get a notice from my
friendly state revenue office or county assessor demanding yet another report,
with corresponding tax assessment and bill. Another arrived today, one that
somehow I’ve never received before and am apparently delinquent in. Don’t know
how I passed under their radar scope—it wasn’t intentional; I didn’t know this
one existed—but they’ve found me now. Every time I turn around there’s more tax
paperwork and another bill. But as they point out, your tax preparer or
accountant will have the info. Yeah, and I have to pay him to figure it up.
What makes it worse and lit the tinder to this tirade is
that at this time of year I’m slogging through the process of putting together
everything needed to file my taxes. I just finished figuring up and sending out
the 1099s, which have to be mailed by January 31. I have to pay for the forms
and envelopes and do all this work to help the government tax anyone and
everyone I ever employed in any capacity whatsoever. And then I have to pay my
accountant to filter through all the paperwork, crunch all the numbers, and determine
what I owe the government or, if I’m lucky—or unlucky, since it means I had a
loss—what the government owes me. The amount of time and money we Americans
spend working for “our” federal, state, and local governments, only to then pay
for the privilege, is enraging.
I could be investing all that time and money in growing my
business. And putting a few people to work. Multiply that by all the other
businesses in this country, most of which have whole departments dedicated to
handling the taxes necessary to maintain this bloated superstructure we call
the U.S. Government.
That’s just wrong.
The form I received today is the “Tangible Personal Property
Schedule for Reporting Commercial and Industrial Personal Property (with “Due
March 1” in big, bold red letters at the top). I’m advised that:
“In accordance with state guidelines [their emphasis]
and in an effort to comply with a recent
federal court ruling [my emphasis], we must request the following
information regarding your business personal property. [Business personal
property??? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?] Please submit a
depreciations schedule/current fixed asset listing or small business item
listing. See brief definition below.”
There follows a whole page. Plus another legal-sized page
printed front and back with instructions. What I’m thinking isn’t fit to print.
For my business license—which the previous county clerk told
me I didn’t need, but the current county clerk decided I did and fined me for
being in arrears—just figuring out what category a publishing house belongs to
was mind boggling. You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.
Here are the instructions on this form.
“Report all personal property owned by you and used or held
for use in your business or profession as of January 1, including items fully
depreciated on your accounting records. Do not report inventories of
merchandise held for sale or exchange or finished goods in the hands of the
manufacturer. Personal property leased or rented and used in your business must
be reported on Part III of this schedule and not in this section. A separate
schedule should be filed for each business location. List the total original
cost to you for each group below by year acquired in the REVISED COST column.
If COST ON FILE is printed on the schedule, you need only report new cost
totals resulting from acquisition or disposition of property in the REVISED
COST column. Alternative Reporting for Small Accounts—If you believe the
depreciated value of your property is $1,000 or less you may use the small
accounts certification (reverse side) as an alternative to reporting detail
costs below. With this certification, subject
to audit [my emphasis], your assessment per this schedule will be set at
$300.”
Did you understand that? You have to supply an itemized list
of everything you own that you ever use for business, down to the paperclips
and staples, so they can tax you on it. And I already paid almost 10% sales tax on all of
it!!
This includes: “Group 1. furniture, fixtures, general
equipment, and all other property not listed in another group. Group 2:
computers, copiers, peripherals, fax machines, and tools. Group 3: molds, dies,
and jigs. Group 4: aircraft, towers, and boats. Group 5: manufacturing
machinery. Group 6: billboards, tanks, and pipelines. Group 7: scrap property.
[Oh, they don’t actually tax you on that, but you have to report it anyway!]
Group 8: raw materials and supplies. Group 9: vehicles. Group 10: construction
in process.” Nicely: “If your personal vehicle is being used for business less
than 50%, please note that on the schedule and do not report it.” Huh??? Ah . .
. how do you report something without actually reporting it? Sorry. I’m an
editor . . .
Now, you can get around doing an itemized list if you file
the small accounts certification. But what do you bet the odds are that they’ll
audit you? Plus you have to check the box that verifies: “By checking the box
at left, I certify that the total depreciated value of my property (all groups)
is $1,000 or less. I understand this certification is subject to penalties for
perjury and I may be subject to statutory penalty and cost if this
certification is proven false.” Proven
false. Nothing said about making an honest mistake. Irrelevant anyway since
you’d be ahead of the game to ignore this option and invest the time and effort
up front to inventory everything you own in order to make sure you didn’t miss
something they might penalize you for.
Can you believe this???
George III had NOTHING on the U.S. Government. Our Founders must be turning
over in their graves. Believe me, I’ve studied the truly objectionable British
policies that finally drove our Founders over the edge, and we would have been
better off just goin’ with it. Whatever. They’re 3,000 miles away across the
ocean. What can they really do? Give ’em their pound of flesh, make an
appearance of compliance, do what you gotta do . . . and then go on about your
business. What they don’t know won’t bite ya.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t object to paying for essential
government services. In fact, I’m glad to. Our lives are a whole lot better for
police and fire protection, good roads, schools, communications systems, and
many other real benefits our tax dollars provide. But things have gotten waaaayyyy
out of hand. I want value for my money. I don’t want it to go into somebody’s
pocket under the table or to pay for a bloated government bureaucracy that
stifles incentive and growth and drags people down instead of lifting them up.
What bothers me the most is that a whole lot of precious
blood was shed during the Revolution, and we’re in a worse situation now than our
ancestors even envisioned then. Our government makes British rule in the 18th
century look like an amateur act. And they’re right here in our laps! You can
run, but ya can’t hide.
Well, honey, we can sure vote ’em out and keep on doing it until the representatives we put in Congress and the Oval Office sit up and take notice and begin doing what we elected them to do instead of taking advantage of their positions to line their own nests and/or advance agendas the majority of us don’t agree with.
It’s past time
for a new day to dawn. I don’t know about you, but TEA Party, here I come!
What’s your opinion? Leave a comment and let’s talk!
