Death, Taxes, Ancient History, and Bad Advice

“I have to do it alone.  Don’t you get it?  Everybody dies here.  It’s just a rule.  Death, taxes, more death, and I don’t pay taxes.  So all I know is death.” – Ash vs. The Evil Dead

Don’t delay on filing your taxes . . . any longer than me.

If I could write a book about taxes, it would be a very short book:

“Avoid paying taxes if you can and do in such a way as to not be thrown into jail.”

That would be the title.  That would also be Chapter One.  There would be no Chapter Two.

“Tis impossible to be sure of any thing but Death and Taxes,” wrote Christopher Bullock in The Cobler of Preston in 1716.  There is, however, biblical evidence that Bullock was only partially correct:  in the New Testament, Jesus was hanging with Peter and they were talking about taxes.  Jesus tells Peter to go down and catch a fish, and money would be inside the fish, and Peter could go pay taxes for both of them.  Peter did, and they even have the picture to prove it since they didn’t have receipts back then:

Is that Jesus or John Lennon behind Peter?

So, even though Jesus could both return from the dead as well as make dead people live again, he still paid taxes.  This therefore means that the only real certainty in life is . . . taxes.  If you’re an atheist, however, it’s okay to plan for both.

The biggest tax (for me) is income tax.  But the list of common taxes is mindboggling:

• Federal Income Tax
• State Income Tax
• Sales Tax
• Social Security Tax
• Medicare Tax
• Property Tax
• Liquor Tax
• Gasoline Tax
• Tobacco Tax

I was going to make up some joke taxes for the list above, but throughout history, I believe that government has taxed . . . everything.  New York City has a tax on food, but if the restaurant slices your bagel that means it’s prepared food, so thus you get to pay yet another tax for the privilege of living in New York.  But taxes aren’t new – taxation spans recorded history – the earliest documents relating to accounting go back to at least 5,000 B.C.  I suspect taxation goes back even deeper into the past – there are tally sticks that go back at least 40,000 years, and I imagine that they were counting out taxes on profits from sales of knickers made out of baboon fur even then.

Is it just me or does it look like the Egyptian accountants have huge Egyptian bongs?  Talk about creative accounting . . . 

As tribes wandered around in the distant past, the idea of supporting others within your tribe was probably pretty natural – these were your people, after all.  But as tribes grew bigger, and connections more tenuous, taxation started.  I think the idea of taxation came as soon as one man could count and see that another man had a little more than he did, was a little bit better of a hunter, a little bit better at fishing.

That man (or maybe his wife) then got other men and planted the idea of envy.  “Why Oog need three bearskins?  Me have only one, so Oog one percenter.  He am greedy for having thing Thag want.”  Thag went on to write the first tax regulation.  Humanity, I guess, has evil people who are filled with hatred that show up all throughout our history – we call them the IRS® now.

Okay, sometimes I use colored pencils and also write quotations from Moby Dick. 

For all of that time, governments have taken taxation seriously.  Murder?  Arson?  Burning an elementary school?  Overthrowing the government of a small (really small) country for fun and profit?  All petty crimes when compared to cheating on taxes.  I think the current punishment for tax evasion includes snakes and having to share a cell with a Hollywood® C- list actress-mother who bought her kid into USC®, so I certainly don’t advocate that – I mean, snakes are not so bad, but Hollywood™ mothers?

So what can you do?

First, file your taxes.  TurboTax® makes it easy, sadly.  I wish that taxes were difficult to pay.  I wish that every person got paid weekly, in cash, and had to count off actual cash payments to an IRS© agent.  Or that there was no withholding so that people HAD to write a check every year for the full amount of taxes due and didn’t live with a fictitious “I got a refund – the government paid me” mindset.

Second, max out any things you can do that lower your tax burden.  401K’s are nice for that – they allow you to invest money (often in the stock market) before taxes are taken out so you make stock gains on the pre-tax dollars.  This puts your tax burden out into the future when you will need Depends® and a walker and worthless paper dollars will be used by barbarians for heat due to the new ice age due in 2028.  But at least you avoided taxes now.

Actually the records are in an envelope under my camping gear in the basement in that back room.  I think.

Third, set yourself up as a corporation and have your employer hire the corporation to do your job and pay yourself minimum wage.  The rest of your salary can then be paid out in dividends to you, which are taxed at a lower amount and you can be just like Warren Buffet.  Really, Warren does just that, and then he complains that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary, although there’s really nothing that would stop him from paying your taxes, or mine.  But he won’t because he’s busy having cheeseburgers in Margaritaville.  Oh.  Wrong Buffet.

Fourth, don’t make up your own currency to pay your taxes.  As cool as “Bi$onBuck$” sounds, unless you want three free meals a day for the next 33 to 60 months, you should probably not use ‘em to pay your taxes.

Yes, I know they’re Euros, but don’t they look like Christmas wrapping paper?  Besides, all you can do with Euros is buy baguettes, bassinettes, marionettes and cigarettes in France.

Fifth, put off doing your taxes to the last minute.  It lowers your risk of audit, and, if you’re like me and have to send off a check most years, you can keep your money for just a few more weeks so you can roll on your bed in it.  Unfortunately the pennies stick to my butt, so be careful if I give you change.

Sixth, remember that John Wilder (me) is an Internet humorist and is not licensed to be a financial advisor or tax consultant or provide legal advice, because what would the fun be in that?